Lawyers for WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange are waging what’s likely his last fight to avoid extradition from the UK to the US, where he would stand trial, facing up to 175 years in prison. Assange, who has been held in Belmarsh high security prison since 2019, did not attend two days of hearings before Britain’s High Court of Justice Feb. 20 and 21, due to ill health.
Assange is wanted by U.S. authorities for WikiLeak’s publication of hundreds of thousands of classified Pentagon documents and diplomatic cables in 2010 and 2011 that exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to embarrassing diplomatic abuses.
In court, Edward Fitzgerald, one of Assange’s lawyers, declared that in prosecuting his client, the U.S. government was seeking to criminalize “ordinary journalistic practices.” Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Kevin Gosztola, editor and publisher of The Dissenter newsletter, and author. Here he discusses the status of Julian Assange’s fight against extradition, and why many believe his prosecution poses a grave threat to investigative journalism and freedom of the press.
KEVIN GOSZTOLA: We’re waiting for a decision from an appeals court in the U.K. that’s called the British High Court of Justice. They’ve actually already heard an issue in this case and they ruled against Julian Assange. The U.S. government appealed to them back in 2021 after a district judge ruled that it would be oppressive to extradite Julian Assange to the U.S. for mental health reasons.
Finally, Julian Assange got to go before this court last week and argue that a number of violations of his rights would occur if he was extradited and put those issues of freedom of the press and issues of retaliation against him for his political opinions before the court to really challenge the core aspects of this political case. So now we wait to see if any of that was persuasive enough to convince the High Court to grant a full appeal hearing.
And if they decide that none of the grounds for appeal are legitimate, he has no more options in the U.K. He can appeal to what is known as the European Court of Human Rights, but that will take some time. And it’s not a guarantee that they will take his petition, if he were to submit one. It pretty much means if the European Court of Human Rights says no, that he will be extradited to the U.S.
And so, then it’s on us I believe, as Americans particularly, to truly consider what is at stake when the U.S. government is putting a publisher on trial in this unprecedented manner.
SCOTT HARRIS: And, Kevin, I did want to ask you about this core issue of freedom of the press. It’s true that The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, all published parts of the WikiLeaks documents. The Obama administration at the time opted not to charge Julian Assange because they had good relations with these newspapers. But the Trump administration did charge Julian Assange and that’s why we are where we are now.
But the Biden administration, of course, has an option not to proceed with these charges. But of course, they haven’t. Tell us a little bit about what you know is going on here and what the Biden administration’s objective is in continuing to press these charges against Julian Assange against widespread criticism about that very issue of press freedom.
KEVIN GOSZTOLA: What you’re asking me goes to the heart of the argument that was made before the High Court of Justice about why this extradition should be rejected. It’s because it’s politically motivated.
The law is not being evenly applied. The Obama administration did a test to figure out if they could apply the Espionage Act to Julian Assange and they determined it would be unfair because if they did, they would then have to charge The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian that published the documents.
They cared about these First Amendment issues or they at least thought they were enough to curtail how far they went in pursuing Julian Assange.
With Biden in office now, he inherited this prosecution and has decided not to abandon it, even though it does not match up with the principles that he would have supported when he was vice president in Obama’s administration.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, Kevin, we’re almost out of time. And I wanted to ask you, I think the key question here with this prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing government secrets, what’s at stake here for freedom of the press with the precedent that’s being set — whether or not Julian Assange is extradited to the United States, whether or not he stands trial, whether or not he’s found guilty — what’s the precedent here that worries you and other journalists?
KEVIN GOSZTOLA: The president is saying that anybody around the world can be extradited to the United States and put on trial, particularly journalists, which then gives a green light to any country with any regional power. Say if they want to control their state secrets and assert power — actually, Vladimir Putin right now has a Wall Street Journal reporter in detention named Evan Gershkovich, that Biden is spending a lot of time trying to get released.
And Putin’s argument for keeping him in detention is not that much different from the argument Biden and the Justice Department are making for keeping Julian Assange in jail and pursuing extradition.
If you just go domestically, to wrap it up, we’re talking about undermining the First Amendment and everything that has allowed for open publication of information. And also the Justice Department is deciding who is and is not a journalist.
The reason why they believe they can go after Julian Assange is simply by categorizing as something else, categorizing him as a hacker or maybe even some kind of an anarchist who doesn’t care about the law. And I think that’s really dangerous that the Justice Department gets to just pursue somebody and just quickly say, “OK, they’re not a journalist. We have the freedom to go after and prosecute that person.”
For more information, visit The Dissenter newsletter at thedissenter.org.
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