Assange, blow of extradition | Ecuador has revoked the …

Finally, what seemed inevitable happened. Yesterday morning, Julian Assange, founder of the site WikiLeaks, was expelled from the Embbady of Ecuador in London. President Lenin Moreno is busy with the announcement. Beyond the justification based on alleged violations of an impossible protocol (not only could Assange not say anything, but the media that he had founded, WikiLeaks, could not say anything either), was expelled for strictly political reasons, since Moreno wants to get closer to the United States and Great Britain and to move away from the anti-imperialist inheritance of his predecessor, Rafael Correa.

If it was for British justice, the detention of Assange in this country would not be sustainable. He is accused of committing an undeliverable offense, in violation of the conditions of his parole, on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by the Swedish Government under an investigation. on alleged badual crimes that have already been filed and in which Assange has never been charged. If the United States does not intervene, they appear before the judge, declare, pay the fine and remain free. But the United States intervened and, a few minutes after the arrest, the British Foreign Office issued a statement in which it announced that the United States had requested the extradition of the editor-in-chief. In the event of expulsion, Assange would be the subject of a charge of treason and espionage for the megaphiltration of diplomatic cables known as Cablegate in 2010. A grand jury will be charged with is meeting in Alexandria, Virginia, perhaps the district where more military, spies and police coexist per square meter across the country. country, complained against Assange, plotting of course with its source, Chelsea Manning, to extract the cables and make them known. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison and forgiven by Obama after seven years. Much of Manning's trial focused on whether WikiLeaks had been a pbadive receiver of the cables or whether it had conspired in one way or another to obtain them.

It is true that the border between investigative journalism and terrorism is very thin because of theft of secret information, as between espionage and diplomacy is very thin, it It would be hypocritical to say that journalists are mere recipients. pbadive secrets that they want to tell us. Explaining to a source how to send a document in a safe and anonymous way is not the same as preparing a criminal plan to squelch a government. Thus, at least Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, he understood, and that is why he refused to prosecute Assange. And that's why he also told the Washington Post that he could not judge Assange without coming into conflict with the first amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression. With the Trump government, things started well, as WikiLeaks' Hillary Clinton publications in 2016 helped him win the election. The President today came tweeting "I love WikiLeaks". But things quickly changed when the Assange site released "Vault 7," the largest CIA document filtering of the agency's history. Subsequently, the Trump government has defined WikiLeaks not as a means of communication, but as a "hostile non-governmental intelligence service" and the Alexandria inquiry has gained momentum with new measures and summonses of witnesses, including Manning, who He refused to testify and that is why he returned to prison a month ago.

Now it's time for Assange to move. He could obediently accept his transfer to Alexandria to lead an epic battle for the first amendment, but in his case he would be in a hurry. He will instead choose to wage this battle in London as part of an extradition lawsuit that requires the United States to present its evidence to the public so that he can decide whether Assange is a persecuted journalist or a disguised spy. . In the absence of the aforementioned First Amendment, British laws are more hostile to the free exercise of journalism than US laws. But Assange will bet that the justice of London is more independent than that of northern Virginia. At a minimum, the extradition trial could last for years and, in the meantime, fall into the hands of parliamentary or electoral governments that are not friends with Assange like May and Trump, without whom a negotiated solution would be much easier. And finally, if you lose the extradition lawsuit in Virginia, you will have a revenge. If the case arose in the United States, this would be another chapter in Trump's fight against his country's media and human rights organizations and the freedom of human rights. ;expression. No one can escape the fact that almost every media outlet in the world has published Assange's alleged information and that several of these media, including the New York Times, The Guardian, El País and PageI12, were partners with WikiLeaks in various projects. of publication.

In addition, this judgment would serve as a great debate about what it means to be an internet journalist, social networks, media concentration and mega-filtering, what are the limits of the right to privacy? 39, inform in democratic societies and that represents the concept of privacy in the era of hypertransparency.

Trump seems willing to give this debate. This is the type of fight that he likes the most. And we know that Assange has been preparing for a long time at this time.

Beyond geopolitical failures, in a day like this, one can not help but think that beyond the icon, it is the human being. A kind, lively, shy, obstinate, authoritarian, witty, in love with French cheese and Argentinian malbec, who, to publish, was not afraid to face the Pentagon or burn bridges with China , Russia and be completely isolated, that he spent six years and ten months in an atrocious confinement, kept, spied, sometimes isolated and in secret. I have learned a lot from him. Once, we talked for fourteen hours in a row, fourteen hours! with him and his father John Shipman in the conference room of the Embbady. On another occasion, he threw me a phrase that I never forget. "Getting information is easy," he said. "What is difficult, it is to publish it."

@santiodonnell