World media urge Biden to drop case against Julian Assange

Major news outlets, led by The New York Times, have called on the Biden administration to drop charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Assange, who is an Australian national imprisoned inside a British jail, is awaiting extradition to the US where he faces charges of espionage under a law designed to prosecute first world war spies.

The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and El Pais joined forces with the NYT to oppose the charges against Assange, insisting that publishing the material WikiLeaks has released is not a crime. Obtaining and publishing sensitive information is a core part of the daily work of journalists, the outlets wrote on Monday.

Journalists from around the world demand Julian Assange's immediate release

An international coalition of journalists, editors, and publishers has called for the immediate release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from a British jail and demanded that all charges against him be dropped.

On September 28, 2010, the five major news outlets collaborated to release excerpts from 250,000 documents obtained by Assange in the “Cablegate” leak. The material, leaked to WikiLeaks by the then-American soldier Chelsea Manning, exposed the inner workings of US diplomacy around the world.
The editors and publishers of the five major news outlets that first published those revelations insisted that the prosecution of Assange is a direct attack on media freedom.

“This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s first amendment and the freedom of the press,” they wrote. “Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists. If that work is criminalized, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker.”

“Twelve years after the publication of ‘Cablegate’, it is time for the US government to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets,” the letter concluded.

Since his arrest at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2019, Assange has been held in London's Belmarsh prison. He had spent the previous seven years living inside the diplomatic premises to avoid arrest over now-dropped sex charges in Sweden. He was eventually arrested by British police for charges lodged at a British court for a case of alleged hacking of a government computer in the UK.

Assange arrest shows press freedom does not exist in West: Analyst

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The then UK home secretary, Priti Patel, approved the whistle-blower's extradition to the US in June, but Assange's lawyers are appealing against this decision.

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks has earned an international reputation for disclosing secret documents from governments around the world. Since WikiLeaks was founded in 2006, it has published hundreds of thousands of secret files and diplomatic cables. But the non-profit media organization owes the bulk of its global prominence to leaking US diplomatic cables that revealed the extent of corruption, horrifying killings and abuse of civilians by American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During Barack Obama’s presidency, the US government indicated it would not prosecute Assange for the leak in 2010 because of the precedent it would set. The media outlets are now appealing to the administration of President Joe Biden, who was vice-president at that time, to drop the espionage charges against Assange.

The full letter sent by the media organizations:

Publishing is not a crime: The US government should end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.

Twelve years ago, on November 28th 2010, our five international media outlets – the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El País and Der Spiegel – published a series of revelations in cooperation with WikiLeaks that made the headlines around the globe.
“Cablegate”, a set of 251,000 confidential cables from the US state department, disclosed corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on an international scale.
In the words of the New York Times, the documents told “the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money”. Even now in 2022, journalists and historians continue to publish new revelations, using the unique trove of documents.
For Julian Assange, publisher of WikLeaks, the publication of “Cablegate” and several other related leaks had the most severe consequences. On April 12th 2019, Assange was arrested in London on a US arrest warrant, and has now been held for three and a half years in a high-security British prison usually used for terrorists and members of organised crime groups. He faces extradition to the US and a sentence of up to 175 years in an American maximum-security prison.
This group of editors and publishers, all of whom had worked with Assange, felt the need to publicly criticise his conduct in 2011 when unredacted copies of the cables were released, and some of us are concerned about the allegations in the indictment that he attempted to aid in computer intrusion of a classified database. But we come together now to express our grave concerns about the continued prosecution of Julian Assange for obtaining and publishing classified materials.
The Obama-Biden administration, in office during the WikiLeaks publication in 2010, refrained from indicting Assange, explaining that they would have had to indict journalists from major news outlets too. Their position placed a premium on press freedom, despite its uncomfortable consequences. Under Donald Trump however, the position changed. The DoJ relied on an old law, the Espionage Act of 1917 (designed to prosecute potential spies during world war one), which has never been used to prosecute a publisher or broadcaster.
This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s first amendment and the freedom of the press.
Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists. If that work is criminalized, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker.
Twelve years after the publication of “Cablegate”, it is time for the US government to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.

Publishing is not a crime.

 

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