Many consider Julian Assange to be a champion of transparency and freedom, even as several governments have condemned him as a whistleblower who undermines national security.

Assange is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who has won multiple awards for publishing and journalism. In 2006, he founded Wikileaks, a whistleblower platform that leaks classified documents related to war, spying, and corruption. Tens of thousand of documents, reports, emails, and cables from various parts of the world have been aired via Wikileaks.

In 2010, Assange assisted a former US army intelligence analyst, Chelsea Manning, to crack a password on the Secret Internet Protocol Network, the network the US government uses to share classified information. Assange then gained international attention when Wikileaks leaked sensitive US army intelligence documents and military logs from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The leaks said that the US military had killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents during these wars.

One video that gained much scrutiny was of US soldiers in an Apache combat helicopter killing several Iraqi civilians, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver. When a man drove up to help the victims, he and his two children were also shot. “Nice, good shot,” shouted a member of the US crew in the video. “Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards,” said another.

Chelsea Manning, Assange’s accomplice, was convicted in 2013 on espionage charges and served seven years in a US military prison, but Assange managed to avoid extradition to the US.

The leaks were considered the largest security breach of their kind in US military history. The US Department of Justice described them as “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.” Then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the leaks “an attack on the international community.” Assange insisted that the leaked files exposed serious abuses by the US armed forces.

According to one commentator in the European press, “Assange’s methods are a matter for debate. That he and his team did not black-out all the names of US government’s collaborators in the Iraq War documents was a blatant mistake and might have put innocent people at risk. Whether it was journalistically necessary to publish Hillary Clinton’s emails during the election campaign and thus help Donald Trump win the election is also questionable. But none of this justifies his arrest and extradition to the US, where he faces an unfair trial and a life sentence.”

I disagree with this. Truth must be told, especially during wartime, and how a possible future US president decides how to handle affairs is another serious matter that is worth exposing. When the umbrella shading deceit and injustice is removed, the world is in a better place.  

The US authorities later began extradition proceedings to bring Assange to the US. In order to avoid extradition, Assange first took up self-imposed confinement, and then he was in enforced incarceration for 12 years. Had he been extradited and later convicted in the US, he would have faced up to 10 years in prison for each of the 17 felony counts against him, which amount to 170 years, a deliberate death sentence. His extradition process dragged on for 14 years.

In 2012, Sweden also wanted Assange extradited on claims of rape, which he denied, considering them to be a ploy to hand him over to the US. The claims were dismissed in 2015. In 2012, Assange, disguised as a motorcycle courier, went to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and asked for asylum. He was granted it by Ecuador’s then president Rafael Correa. According to the BBC, “for seven years, Julian Assange took refuge in a small office that was converted into a bedroom in Ecuador’s embassy in an upmarket neighbourhood of central London, where he lived with his cat, James. It had a bed, sun lamp, computer, kitchenette, shower, and treadmill.”

After those seven years, Assange exited the embassy. It happened after the new but now former Ecuadorian president, Lenin Moreno, ended Assange’s stay. Assange was arrested in April 2019 by the UK police. He was tried for not surrendering to the courts to be extradited to Sweden and received a 50-week prison sentence. Out of fears that he could try to flee or abscond while the extradition process was going on, Assange remained in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison for five years.

Today, after 14 years, Julian Assange is free. He pleaded guilty to a single charge of breaching the espionage law in the US and was sentenced to 62 months in prison. However, he will not face any new prison time, owing to the five years he has already served in the London prison.

Assange thus headed home to Australia a free man. “Julian is free!!!!” wife Stella wrote on X (Twitter). “Words cannot express our immense gratitude to YOU – yes, YOU, who have all mobilised for years and years to make this come true,” she added, addressing Assange’s supporters worldwide.

Wikileaks reciprocated the same sentiments. It stressed that Assange’s release was “the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigns, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations.”

Assange has “paid severely for these principles, and people’s rights to know the truth… As he returns to Australia, we thank all those who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.”

The writer is a former professor of communication based in Vancouver, Canada.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 4 July, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly