Julian Assange's Extradition Is A Threat To Free Speech Everywhere

On June 17 2022, the Home Secretary of the U.K. approved the U.S. government’s request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

On June 17 2022, the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom approved the U.S. government’s request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Although Assange plans to appeal the decision, the move brings him one step closer to being sent to the U.S., where he faces trial under an 18-count indictment for conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information. If convicted, Assange faces a potential maximum penalty of 175 years in prison–in effect, a life sentence.

Supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange rally outside of British Embassy .

Assange was initially indicted in May 2018, when the Justice Department was headed by former Attorney General and Trump sycophant Jeff Sessions. The indictment has since been amended (“superseded” in the jargon of the law) twice, first in 2019 and again in 2020.

The indictment alleges that Assange conspired with former Army Intelligence Officer Chelsea Manning and others from 2009 to 2011 to obtain and publish national defense information about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Items supplied by Manning and later published by WikiLeaks allegedly included some 750,000 classified State Department documents and cables as well as several CIA-interrogation videos. Manning also allegedly leaked a video of a 2007 attack staged by U.S. military Apache helicopters in Baghdad that killed two Reuters employees and a dozen other people. (The indictment does not concern WikiLeaks’ publication of confidential Democratic Party emails related to the 2016 presidential campaign.)

Manning was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act of 1917 and other offenses, and was sentenced to serve 35 years in prison. President Obama commuted her sentence in 2017.