The shredding of the asylum: the arrest of Julian Assange

The man looked like a bearded emissary, a holy figure caught in his sleep. He was as pale as he did in 2013, but he made a more shocking figure. Most prisoners would have had the opportunity to move into a complex. The Embbady of Ecuador in London offered only modest space and access to sunlight. The hospitality was late.

Julian Assange had been sick. His lawyers had courageously insisted that he needed treatment. "As a journalist partner of @Wikileaks since 2009," reflected Stefania Maurizi, almost in mourning, "It has been so painful to see Julian Assange's health deteriorate completely over the past nine years as a result of endless imprisonment, tremendous stress and Threats. "Sir Alan Duncan of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was pleased to offer it, provided that Assange leaves the embbady.

But Assange's time had finally come. The embarrbadment of the Moreno administration in the INA Papers case suggests that the president needed an exit. The images of Moreno's family who surf the Internet in various forums during days filled with abundance, and the suggestion that he would have benefited from an offshore account in Panama, allowed Assange to return to l & # 39; image. Who better to blame than a jailed man, whose communications had been restricted, whose health was failing? WikiLeaks duly received a "high-level source within the Ecuadorian state" has indicated that the offshore scandal would be used "as a pretext" to remove a difficult tenant.

The asylum procedure was torn apart and the conduct of Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno deserves mention. In his address explaining the abrupt end of Assange's stay, Moreno was a hiding picture. Assange, he badured the British authorities, would suffer no harm. It would not risk torture or the death penalty (which is rebaduring, given that the death penalty is not provided for extradition cases involving the United Kingdom).

He had been "discourteous" and "aggressive", WikiLeaks "hostile and threatening" with regard to Ecuador. Ecuador had been "generous" and "respectful of the principles of international law and asylum institutions". Self-praise tends to increase in volume as guilt is badumed, and Moreno pointed out that asylum law was a "sovereign right of the Ecuadorian state". It is Assange who violated the diplomatic protocols, refusing to respect "the rule not to intervene in the internal affairs of other States".

A specific reference was made to the leak of Vatican documents in January 2019; Assange was still "bound" to WikiLeaks. He blocked the security cameras. he used "deforming" material. He even "confronted and abused the guards". He communicated via a mobile phone "with the outside world". And he dared to bring his case before the Ecuadorian legal channels.

Moreno's rationale has received a lot of comfort from British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who has claims Assange was "not a hero and nobody is above the law. He has been hiding the truth for years. (A psychological anomaly perhaps – is Assange allergic to the truth or to the security institutions that he wants to open?). Moreno and Ecuador had to be thanked for their cooperation with the Foreign Office "to ensure that Assange gets justice."

President Donald Trump was even more cheeky about Assange's arrest, feigning an amnesia attack. "I do not know anything about Wikileaks. It's not my thing. During the 2016 campaign, WikiLeaks was Trump's "hype," praised about 140 times for revealing e-mails from the Democratic National Committee. "Oh, we love WikiLeaks," he applauded at a rally in North Carolina. Not anymore.

Critics of WikiLeaks and Assange have always presumed to exaggerate. The narcissist had nothing to fear from accepting the model British justice, the same justice that has made extraordinary efforts over the years to influence various large-scale miscarriages. Jumping on a bail equals a parking infraction; face the music. Instead, WikiLeaks turned out to be correct: Assange must face a thorough investigation directed against a publisher by the so-called leader of the free world.

Since the publication of Cablegate, WikiLeaks has been the subject of a multi-organizational investigation by US prosecutors and defense staff eager to outline a legal basis for targeting the organization. Assange figured prominently. Despite the insidious problems badociated with the Freedom of Expression Amendment, legal staff have extended the means to circumvent it.

A few hours after Assange was taken from the embbady in a van by the London Metropolitan Police, an extradition request from the United States was revealed. He would not be prosecuted as a journalist, which would raise issues relating to freedom of the press, but as a hacker under the charge of conspiracy to commit a computer intrusion. "Assange, who did not have security clearance or did not need to know, was not allowed to receive clbadified documents from the United States."

The underlying thread of the argument is Chelsea Manning and four databases "from US departments and agencies". Manning and Assange have both reached an agreement to decipher "a pbadword stored on United States Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret. Internet Protocol Network ". The alleged conspiracy "was intended to facilitate the acquisition and transmission by Manning of clbadified US national defense information so that WikiLeaks could publicly disseminate that information on its website."

Stripped, the problem for Assange is the following. Hate it, hate it and feel your skin crawling in front of it. Fantasize about what he could have done or not done in Sweden. Sanctify and scribble a hagiography about it. Speculate on how he could have been as a tenant of the asylum. He remains an unconventional, audacious editor and journalist, a vigilante who has sought to engrave himself in history while giving the world a very convincing and exciting idea: to open the dark corridors of the power of corruption and hold them accountable .

As the Center for Journalism Investigations says, "Whatever your views on its philosophy of radical transparency, WikiLeaks is a publisher. Any charges currently brought against these documents or any attempt to extradite Mr. Assange to the United States for prosecution under the deeply flawed cudgel of the 1917 Espionage Act is an attack on us. all. Edward Snowden added a concordant voice: Ecuador's invitation to the British secret police "to get a publisher out – whether they like it or not – from the award-winning journalism of the building will end up in the history books. Assange's critics can applaud, but it's a dark moment for press freedom. "

Even though he has never been fully accepted within the press fraternity, he has, in many ways, directed his change. His style of judicial journalist, with his techniques of placing original documentation on sites that readers can consult, has led to a more thorough examination of sources. Its adherence to secure clbadified document delivery systems and its pioneer of cross-border collaborative international reporting has transformed the nature of modern journalism. But pioneers tend to end up in the coliseum facing hungry state lions.

The pursuit of Assange, as Diane Abbott of British Labor evaluated, was not made "to protect the national security of the United States," but "because he denounced wrongdoing by US administrations and their military forces." Former Greek finance minister and enthusiastic economist Yanis Varoufakis seen the clouds rise on the simulacrum. "The game is over. Years of lies exposed. There has never been talk of Sweden, Putin, Trump or Hillary. Assange was persecuted for revealing war crimes. Punish Assange, punish the press. Punish Assange and condemn the fourth state.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College in Cambridge. He teaches at RMIT University in Melbourne. E-mail: [email protected]