He is now back in Australia, after years of being hounded by the US government that was angered by Wikileaks publishing documents that showed the horrific abuses by the US in Iraq, such as the Collateral Murder video leaked by Chelsea Manning of US forces in a helicopter gunship mowing down unarmed civilians in a street, after the gunners misidentified the camera equipment they were carrying as weapons.
It was clear that the US government wanted to come down hard on Manning and Assange in order to discourage any future leakers that might reveal embarrassing information. The problem for the US government is that it is not an offense under US law for a journalist to publish material that is given to them by sources, so the government argued that he was not really a journalist and that he actively colluded to get the material. They further charged him under the draconian Espionage Act that strips defendants of much of their legal rights.
He arrived at a deal in which he pleaded guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defense documents.
In return he was sentenced to time served, with no supervisory period or financial penalty, due to time already served in Belmarsh prison in London. He flew out of Saipan, headed for Canberra, at lunchtime on Wednesday.
His release ends a legal saga that spanned more than a decade, in which Assange spent five years in the high-security jail and seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, battling extradition to the US, where he faced 18 criminal charges.
Speaking to reporters outside the Saipan court, his lawyers called the prosecution “unprecedented” and an assault on free speech, but said it was time the fight came to an end.
In one sense, this plea is a defeat for journalistic rights but one can hardly blame Assange for wanting to be free of this persecution. When the US government wants to be vindictive, it has a vast array of tools at its disposal to make life very difficult for someone, to coerce them to agree to a plea deal. Assange was aided by the fact that the Australian government lobbied heavily on his behalf.
The Australian government charges Assange USD 520,000 for the flight home:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/free-julian-assange
@Jorg @1
Hopefully he had good leg room and could checkin one piece of luggage!
Assange also hurt his own situation badly in 2016. His personal dislike for Hillary resulted in Wikileaks being used by Russia for propaganda. The Russians stole the information and then handed it over anonymously to Wikileaks because it would have more credibility in the US that way. Assange didn’t verify the emails or their background with the normal level of care, he pumped them for maximum public effect.
The email appears to have been accurate but it was never entirely confirmed. It didn’t matter though because even if entirely accurate this was Wikileaks being used for political propaganda by another government.
This doesn’t change that Assange was over prosecuted.
This plea bargain does leave the US government with no restrictions on how it can use the Espionage Act against journalists -- arguably the primary motive behind bringing this case, and also the worst (for those not named Assange, anyway).
The odds seem infinitesimal that Julian A will not try some sort of publicity seeking stunt eventually, almost certainly before/relating to the US elections.
Does it?
So, you reckon that before this plea bargain, there were restrictions.
And after it, there aren’t.
(Seems like quite the bullshitty and arbitrary claim to me, especially with zero attempt to justify it)
Heh. We’ll certainly see.
Is it not obvious to you that a shitload of negotiating and compromise was done by all parties involved?
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He might have dabbled in hubris, thought he was a mover and a shaker and thus immune, gone a bit funny over the years of confinement, all that — but he ain’t an idiot.
As ever, Marcy Wheeler nails it:
The Damaging Precedent of the Julian Assange Espionage Guilty Plea
John Morales @ # 5 -- US use of the Espionage Act against journalists previously had no judicial precedents; now it does.
Um, Pierce, it does not follow that, because the US use of the Espionage Act against journalists previously had no judicial precedents hitherto yet now it does, the US government has set itself no restrictions on how it can use the Espionage Act against journalists. Not on that alone
(Which is, of course, a naive view; realpolitik again. If the rules are inconvenient, change them, that’s the go)
Care to quote chapter and verse? Surely you can find the documents specifying the basis and legality of those nonexistent restrictions that (according to you) the US government has set itself on how it can use the Espionage Act against journalists.
(Big claim, shit justification, no evidence)
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I mean, I get it’s your opinion, Pierce.
Me, I think it’s baseless hyperbole, and unwarranted absent some justification.
BTW, is Assange more than one journalist?
(I thought he was but one person)
[Both previously and also hitherto in the same sentence.
Something perhaps annoying to a grammarian, no? I reckon so.
Or is grammarian the wrong specialty? 🙂 ]
I’m pleased Assange is free, but if he hadn’t evaded Swedish justice and stiffed the people who put up his bail in 2010 he’d have been home in Australia years ago even if he’d been convicted of rape, without having to set a disturbing precedent by pleading guilty to espionage.
@KG: You’re assuming that the rape charges weren’t just a pretext to hand him over to the USA. I don’t think that’s a safe assumption.
Rulings by courts with competent jurisdiction set precedents. Plea bargains not so much. A court does not have to accept a plea bargain. Usually they do, but they are not required to.
ardipithecus @ # 13: Usually they do…
Considering, as Wheeler points out in my link @ # 6, that the DOJ could have chosen any of several other charges for JA’s plea bargain, I think they picked that out of the “shitload of negotiating” specifically to maximize their Espionage Act leverage in the future. Unlike Assange, they work with calculation and forethought.
Good.
We need to repeal our shameful and unconstitutional Espionage Act entirely, but the greatest journalist of our time escaped being tortured to death and I am proud of Julian Assange and his supporters for that. It won’t be justice because they can’t give fourteen years of his life back to him, but he can begin to heal.
On that note, how much prison time did the war criminals in the Collateral Murder video get? No justice there either. It seems like the U.S. government is less interested in prosecuting actual criminals and more interested in covering up their misdeeds…
Dunc@12,
I think it is an entirely safe assumption -- Sweden was far less likely to extradite Assange to the USA than the UK -- and that it’s utterly disgraceful that the women complaining about his behaviour are libelled in this way. Assange already had a history of bad behaviour towards women. He described Sweden as “The Saudi Arabia of feminism”. People don’t seem able to accept the possibility that Assange is both a hero for his exposure of US government crimes -- and a rapist.