Posting news is not a crime. With these words begins and ends an appeal that the editors-in-chief and publishers of five leading international newspapers and magazines address to the US government: Twelve years after the revelations of “Cablegate”, it is time for Washington to end its persecution of the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange finished, write the senior staff of New York Times and des Guardiansfrom Le Monde, mirror and El País in an open letter.
Assange’s Wikileaks platform has been in the sights of the US authorities since the publication of videos in 2010 documenting war crimes by US soldiers in Iraq. Also in 2010, she had granted the aforementioned media access to a package of more than 250,000 internal reports and situation assessments from US embassies around the world. In late November, newspapers and magazines began publishing a series of articles that “exposed corruption, diplomatic scandals and agent affairs,” as the open letter describes. Like the videos from Iraq, they had been punctured by whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Assange has been accused of helping Manning hack US servers and endangering the lives of US informants by publishing the story. While Manning was first convicted by the US judiciary and then pardoned by Barack Obama, the legal prosecution of Julian Assange continues to this day.
Assange and his supporters have been fighting extradition since 2019
The Obama administration’s original position of not prosecuting because then they would have had to call the editors of the publishing media to account, was revised by the Trump administration. Assange has now been charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, which was actually aimed at enemy agents. There is a risk of 175 years imprisonment. Assange was initially able to evade arrest by finding asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for years. Finally, in April 2019, he was arrested. Since then, the 51-year-old and his supporters have been fighting against being extradited to the United States and the continuation of extradition detention. After several negotiations in court, the British government ultimately has to decide on the deportation.
The five media that signed the open letter are now demanding that extradition should no longer be necessary. The US should drop the charges. She is setting “a dangerous precedent” that threatens to “undermine freedom of the press.” Holding governments responsible for their actions is a “central mission of a free press in a democracy”. This would be weakened if journalistic work was criminalized.