On 24 June, Julian Assange was released from Belmarsh Prison and was able to return to Australia (his country of origin). He had been detained since 2019, at the request of the US government, with a request for extradition, accused of “revealing secret information”. Who is Julian Assange and what is the significance of his release?
By Alejandro Iturbe
Translated from https://litci.org/es/liberan-a-julian-assange/
Julian Assange was born in 1972. From an early age he was involved in programming and following the ever-growing use and influence of the internet and new media. He developed a very critical view of how imperialist capitalism and its governments used these media and connected with other young people with similar views.
They considered that the internet had become a means of gathering information about the population to control and manipulate it (a concept that today is called “information mining”). This vision was set out in a developed form in the book “Cyberpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet”, published in 2012[1].
At the same time, they considered that the most influential media only disseminated information that was of interest to governments and companies to manipulate public opinion and concealed everything else, especially the “secret plots” of power and the methods they used.
They thus became what today are called “cyberactivists” and grouped together with the aim of developing an “alternative media” that would uncover and publicly denounce these “shady secrets”. In 2006, they created the WikiLeaks site with this aim in mind[2].
From then on, they began to publish some “secret documents”, but the leap in quality came in 2010, when Chelsea Elizabeth Manning, a former military and intelligence analyst for the US Armed Forces, gave Assange thousands of classified documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with cables and “secret communications”[3].
The most sensitive of these materials is a video filmed on 12 July 2007, in which US soldiers in Iraq are seen firing from a helicopter and killing a group of civilians including two Reuters journalists and nine other people. The military authorities’ official version of what happened was that it was a ‘collateral consequence’ of ‘combat against Iraqi insurgents’, which the video proves to be false[4].
Once made public, under the name “Collateral Murder”, the video quickly went viral in 2010, with millions of views, and generated a huge scandal in the US with strong questioning of the military authorities and the now former president George Bush Jr. From then on, a permanent international judicial persecution of Julian Assange began.
The accusations in Sweden
Assange travelled permanently to various countries where he resided for some time. In 2010, shortly after the major Wikileaks leak, the Australian government withdrew his passport and warned him that it would be cancelled. He denounced this as a US request and persecution.
That same year, Assange applied for a work and residence permit in Sweden, where he was living. The Swedish government rejected the request, and at the same time, the Swedish judiciary initiated two legal proceedings for accusations of “rape” and “sexual harassment” by two Swedish women and ordered his arrest (subsequently only the rape case remained ongoing).
The judicial accusations against Assange in Sweden “came and went” several times. In 2017, the Swedish justice system closed the case due to the difficulty of proving the facts. Then, in 2010, Assange fled to England and, in fact, went into semi-clandestinity. In the meantime, the Swedish justice system asked the British government to arrest him and extradite him to Sweden.
Assange always said that this was a “staged judicial process” and that the real aim of the Swedish justice system was to arrest him and then extradite him to the US so that he could be tried and sentenced in that country for the Wikileaks “leaks”.
On the specific act he was accused of in Sweden, his version was also very confusing. First, he said that he had met the women but that he had not had sexual relations with them. Later he admitted that he had.
Before we continue with his story, we want to make one point clear: if Assange had committed the sexual offences of which he is accused, it would be entirely valid for him to be tried and convicted for them in Sweden.
Refugee in the Ecuadorian embassy
In Britain, the courts order Assange’s arrest at the request of Sweden. In 2012, Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and requested political asylum, which was finally granted by the government of Rafael Correa. At the time, the British authorities warned that they would not give him safe conduct to leave the country and go to Ecuador. But they did not dare to invade the embassy and arrest him, although there was a failed attempt in 2016.
He then lived as a refugee in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years. The situation changed in 2019, when the new Ecuadorian government officially announced that it was no longer granting political asylum to Assange, and British police forces violently arrested him.
Belmarsh Prison
At the same time, the cause for which the British justice system was ordering his arrest had changed. It was no longer at the request of Sweden (where the prosecution for sexual offences had been closed). Now it was directly and clearly at the request of the USA, with a request for extradition to try and convict him for the “serious crime” of the Wikileaks “leaks”, something that US imperialism and its British partner could not let go unpunished. From prison, Assange filed several appeals to prevent his extradition.
During the five years he was imprisoned, the prison conditions were extremely harsh, like those that imperialist countries apply to the most dangerous “terrorists”. He was forced to remain 23 hours a day in solitary confinement in his cell, with only 45 minutes for exercise in a concrete courtyard. When he left his cell, he was prevented from having any contact with the other prisoners.
In this situation, his physical and mental health deteriorated severely, even to the point of death. This inhumane treatment was publicly denounced by the international campaign demanding his release, and so evident was this mistreatment that 60 doctors, from the US, Australia, the UK and Sweden, published a letter to the British government “to express our grave concern for Julian Assange’s physical and mental health”[5].
Even Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, stated that “a system was being set up to assassinate him”[6].
International campaign
In this situation, the “Assange case” reached international prominence and his figure became a symbol of the “alternative press” and of the cruel persecution of imperialist countries that are considered “enemies”.
A large international campaign developed against his deportation to the United States and for his immediate release, through letters and petitions to the British judiciary and numerous articles and statements. These included the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), which launched its own campaign[7], and Amnesty International.
Many years ago (when he was still a refugee in the Ecuadorian embassy), the IWL-FI spoke out clearly against the persecution of Julian Assange and joined the campaign demanding his immediate release after he was arrested and imprisoned by the British judiciary[8].
Some considerations
Assange was released after accepting the conditions of a deal proposed by Joe Biden’s government and the US justice system: plead guilty to the charges, receive a sentence that would be considered served with the five years in prison in Britain, be released and be able to return to Australia[9].
It is perfectly understandable that he accepted such an agreement to be released and to be able to recover his physical and mental health, as well as to be able to return to his country to be reunited with his family (his parents, his ex-wife and his son)[10].
On this basis, it is interesting to analyse why the Biden administration and the US judiciary decided to make this proposal. On the one hand, it was due to the huge international campaign in defence of Assange, which exposed the hypocritical image of a “defender of democracy” that US imperialism tries to sell to cover up its crimes.
On the other hand, the Biden administration is under great domestic scrutiny for maintaining its unconditional support for the state of Israel, even during its genocidal action in Gaza. In the US, solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people against Zionism has been expressed in large mobilisations and multiple actions by university youth against Biden’s foreign policy. In this context, the Biden administration considered it best to “defuse” the Assange case.
Beyond these considerations, his release was a triumph of the international campaign and a political defeat for US imperialism. That is why we celebrate it, as do millions around the world.
[1] https://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/view/79481-cypherpunks-nuevo-libro-assange-internet-mayor-maquinaria-vigilancia
[2] This name takes part of the name of the well-known “Wikipedia” and unifies it with the English word leaks, whose meaning in Spanish is “filtración” or “gotera”.
[3] In 2010, Chelsea Manning was imprisoned. In 2013, a military court sentenced her to 35 years in prison and her “dishonourable” discharge from the military. Obama released her in 2017, commuting the remainder of her sentence, but she was imprisoned again in 2019 to force her to testify against Assange. She attempted suicide in prison in 2020. She was finally released at the end of that year. In 2013, Chelsea Manning came out as a trans woman and, in 2014, managed to legally change her birth name (Bradley Edward).
[4]https://web.archive.org/web/20100409060709/http://www.publico.es/304527/video/muestra/como/ejercito/eeuu/mata/fotografo/reuters
[5] https://www.lavanguardia.com/internacional/20191125/471840750638/sesenta-medicos-temen-assange-pueda-morir-prision.html
[6] https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange
[7] https://www.ifj.org/es/actividades/campanas-de-la-fip/por-la-libertad-de-julian-assange
[8] See for example: https://litci.org/es/una-verdadera-conspiracion-imperialista/ and
[9] https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cv22g41znd3o
[10] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=441355632024672