A decade since the Iraq War Logs: Julian Assange could face 175 years behind bars in January ruling

A ruling 10 years in the making: what will January´s verdict mean for Julian Assange and for the future of journalism?

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ars Electronica Festival in Austria in 2009. Photo by Ars Electronica, September 7, 2009, CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0.

In 2006, Julian Assange founded WikiLeaks as an “asylum” to the “world’s most persecuted documents”. The vast online archive is home to 10 million records and associated analyses, which expose classified information kept secret by governments all around the world, and has landed Assange in very hot water as a hacker turned whistleblower. 

The WikiLeaks founder was most recently arrested in April 2019, and has since been held at Belmarsh Prison, a category-A facility in South-East London, intended for individuals who may threaten national security should they escape. His father said that Assange has been “subject to every sort of torment” at Belmarsh, and in April this year it was reported that he  spends 23 hours a day in isolation. 

Assange has been indicted on 17 counts of violation of the USA’s 1917 Espionage Act. On January 4, 2021 at the Old Bailey Court, district judge Vanessa Baraister will decide whether the 49-year-old whistleblower will be extradited to the USA where he could face 175 years behind bars. The case of Assange has been a long and confusing decade, and one that has divided journalists and politicians all over the world. 

This month marks 10 years since the WikiLeaks founder was first detained on December 7, 2010. An arrest warrant had been issued by the Swedish authorities on a count of rape, allegedly committed by Assange in August that year. He gave himself up and was taken to an extradition hearing. Two weeks later he made bail after supporters donated £240,000 to secure his freedom. 

Several months earlier in March 2010, Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army, accessed classified information detailing American conduct in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and leaked this data to WikiLeaks, where it was published by Assange. A number of these documents became known as the “Iraq War Logs”, and exposed horrific incidents such as the video footage of an Apache plane shooting civilians in Baghdad in 2007, killing 12. Manning was arrested in 2011 and sentenced to 35 years in prison, a sentence which was later reduced. 

In 2012, with Swedish authorities still calling for Assange to be extradited and tried in Sweden, he appealed for asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London - now also fearful of American extradition after the arrest of Manning. Granted by the Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno, Assange spent seven years there in asylum avoiding both Swedish as well as U.S. extradition. If you google “Julian Assange 2019”, you will find a video of an elderly looking man with white hair and a long white beard being dragged from the doors of the Ecuadorian embassy. When compared to the professional, suited whistleblower, photographed standing proudly on a balcony at that same embassy seven years previously, it is difficult to find any resemblance in the unkempt and aged looking figure seen being bundled into a police van. 

Sweden dropped the rape investigation in November last year, due to weakened evidence as too much time had passed since the initial accusation almost nine years before. However, the U.S., governed by the tougher and less forgiving President Trump, now demanded Assange’s extradition to the U.S. upon his arrest in London. Mike Pompeo, then director of the CIA, stated, “Julian Assange has no first amendment freedoms…”. This statement evoked fear among the whistleblower’s support base about what could happen to him should he be brought to the U.S. 

The case of Assange has become somewhat synonymous with freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Journalists across the globe are viewing his extradition to the U.S. as an attack on the profession as whole, and as a case that would set a dangerous precedent. Daniel Ellsburg is one journalist calling for an end to the case against Assange. Ellsburg, an American journalist, leaked information about the Vietnam War in 1971 to the Washington Post. These records later became known as the Pentagon Papers. Ellsburg was also charged on account of violating espionage laws, however these were later dropped. He hopes Assange will receive a similar reprieve.  

When looking at Assange, it is difficult to see past the sometimes arrogant figure that interrupts court hearings, or the ungrateful guest at the Ecuadorian embassy, or the man accused of rape in Sweden, an accusation only dropped due to his prolonged stay in asylum. For some, this case is about one egotistical man who has cost the British taxpayer millions, but for others it represents the curtailment of journalistic freedom and the narrowing of what can or cannot be reported. The restriction of the media is a dangerous game to play in a democracy, and journalists will watch in anxious anticipation the fate of Julian Assange on January 4 next year.