The good outlaw. a sort of Global Robin Hood that steals unspeakable truths to spread them throughout the world. A cyber insurgent that infiltrates computer systems to unmask hypocrisy on the international stage.
It may not be the reality about Julian Assange, but it is what a good part of humanity sees in him. The image of the rebel who angered the Western power, violating its security systems and spreading evidence of horrible war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan by the North American military around the planet.
It was the relentless persecution of the United States that turned him into a star of 21st century model rebellion, including cybernetic guerrilla warfare. A persecution that turned him into a fugitive cloistered for twelve years, but more than convincing the world that he is a dangerous criminal and spy, it increased the suspicion of wanting to impose global censorship.
For USA, the damage caused by Assange by breaching their computer security systems to obtain and disseminate confidential diplomatic documents and secret military records, is a one-man equivalent of what the Japanese caused by attacking Pearl Harbor. Therefore, the response must have, on its individual scale, a response equivalent in destructiveness to that of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It will not be much? The question that reappeared in the world when British justice began to decide whether to extradite him to the United States or keep him in prison until reviewing the defense appeals.
The life of the controversial Australian was chaotic since he was born to a father who did not want to give him the last name, which was later given to him by Brett Assange, his mother’s first husband. His mother’s artistic life made him grow up in dozens of houses and between moves.
Then, the unfinished studies at the University of Melbourne and the beginnings in “justice” cybercrime that would end up making him persecuted by the main superpower. He Wikileaks case It began in 2010, when the head of that website obtained confidential documents from North American diplomacy and secret military records from the Pentagon, which he handed over to relevant newspapers such as the North American The New York Times, the German Der Spiegel, the British The Guardian, the French Le Monde and the Spanish El País. Those titans of the world press had received from Assange the thousands of secret documents that he later spilled on the Wikileaks networks. Classified documents that exhibited brutalities committed by American forces during the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the midst of the global quake that such revelations produced, the United States applied the Espionage Act and issued an international arrest warrant against Assangewho took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he spent seven years until the Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno made him leave the diplomatic headquarters. Since 2019 he has been in a cell in Belmarsh, the high-security London prison, totaling a total of twelve years deprived of his freedom of movement.
He WikiLeaks case It is one of the crucial debates of these decades. The main international human rights organizations and journalistic entities such as Reporters Without Borders, among others dedicated to protecting journalistic activity and freedom of the press, support Assange’s defense and denounce Washington’s accusation as political persecution.
What seems undoubted is that this is a political case, therefore excluded from justifying extradition under the British-North American treaty signed in 2003, which establishes as not extraditable political cases. Beyond what you might think of Julian Assange, these twelve years of persecution and confinement, raise doubts about the legitimacy of North American actions. Perhaps what needs to be proven is that this is not a case of global censorship.
Now, the issue has returned to the front pages because British justice must decide whether or not to grant the extradition that Washington demands. And the case has once again generated a global debate about press freedom. Is Julian Assange a spy who attacked the security of the United States by disseminating documents that cannot legally be disseminated without North American authorization, or is he a journalist persecuted in an imperial outrage, with the North American state arrogating to itself the right to impose censorship worldwide?
It is one of the most important political debates on the international stage in the last fourteen years. If he were extradited, if found guilty by a North American court he could spend 175 years in prison. It is even possible that he will be sentenced to death. These are the penalties stipulated in the Espionage Law by which Washington demands extradition.
This is legislation enacted in 1917, within the framework of the First World War, related to that conflict and that does not distinguish between espionage and journalism. Julian Assange He would have to explain to the world why his journalism of lurid revelations related to Western powers never discovered or revealed anything about Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Boris Nemtsov, Alexander Litvinenko, Ana Politkovskaya and Alexei Navalni, among many others who investigated and revealed murders, corruption and other crimes of the Russian president, before being assassinated precisely for that, they would have gladly received the help from Wikileaks that they never received.
In turn, the United States would have to explain why what is before the eyes of the world is the relentless persecution of those who revealed diplomatic intrigues and war crimes, and not the military responsible for those crimes. The world looks at the punishment of Julian Assange without having seen those who committed the brutalities revealed in Iraq and Afghanistan punished.
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