Julian Assange granted permission to appeal against extradition to US
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Paragraph 210 of the judgment argues why the US's kidnapping/assassination plot is not a valid ground for refusing the extradition:
> [...] On the face of the allegations (on the evidence before the judge and the fresh evidence) the contemplation of extreme measures against the applicant (whether poisoning for example or rendition) were a response to the fear that the applicant might flee to Russia. The short answer to this, is that the rationale for such conduct is removed if the applicant is extradited. Extradition would result in him being lawfully in the custody of the United States authorities, and the reasons (if they can be called that) for rendition or kidnap or assassination then fall away.
From reading that article it doesn't sound like there was any plot. Mike Pompeo wanted such a thing, but it was never approved. It was hotly contested and never attempted. The article also made it sound like Russia had more of a plot in action to move Assange to Russia.
So there was about as much plot for the US to kidnap Assange as there was to make Mexico to pay for a wall. Hot air from politicians that just evaporates.
>The lawsuit alleged that the CIA violated their constitutional rights by recording their conversations with Assange and copying their devices after suspicions were raised that Assange was working for the Russian intelligence services.
Recording conversations is not the same as plotting a kidnapping.
That is true, but I was replying to OP who said such a thing never happened, when it is clear they did, including the CIA hiring a 3rd party firm to monitor Assange via illeagal methods.
Revisiting your point, this is the original source of the kidnapping allegations: https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london...
This Yahoo News investigation, based on conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials — eight of whom described details of the CIA’s proposals to abduct Assange — reveals for the first time one of the most contentious intelligence debates of the Trump presidency and exposes new details about the U.S. government’s war on WikiLeaks. It was a campaign spearheaded by Pompeo that bent important legal strictures, potentially jeopardized the Justice Department’s work toward prosecuting Assange, and risked a damaging episode in the United Kingdom, the United States’ closest ally.
The CIA declined to comment. Pompeo did not respond to requests for comment.
Additionally later on accusations of a plot to assaninate Assange became prominent too. These allegations were presented and detailed in court last month by Assanges legal team. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-68344106 (ctrl-f assassinate).
Disgusting.
Extradition is not a kidnapping plot.
Administrations and agencies actively+eagerly seeking methods to deliver revenge to Assange in the form of kidnapping and assassination - this is also not extradition.
They can extradite him because Australia says that they can. Most of our countries at the highest levels agreed to this. It's called international law and it's messy.
Not an expat. Julian Assange is not a US citizen, not on US ground, does not work for a US company. He can’t be committing “espionage” because he’s not inside; at most he can be committing “reporting” upon US practices.
Same question arose when EU wrote the GDPR: It was a debate at the time that a US company with no activity in EU could be trialled in EU for misdemeanor against EU laws. Apparently it can.
Obviously not. Yet the USA does this routinely. It's effectively what Assange did.
Publishing US state secrets is not a crime in any other country.
I think that is what the trial is to decide.
> Every country is potentially spying on every other country and it doesn't even matter if they are supposed to be allies or enemies.
Very true. The UK spying on Belgium and the US spying on Germany come to mind., but that is "business as usual" and no one expects it to change or start going after people involved.
Espionage is expected and deterred as possible but because everyone has spies everyone tends to play nice when they get caught, because they don’t want their own agents mistreated.
Disclosure, on the other hand, threatens the power structure of all players.
People need to understand that the every person is meant to be firmly under the foot of the ruling class, and understanding the mechanisms by which this is accomplished is verboten. The excuses range from “what about the children” to “national security” but the goal is the same - maintaining a healthy imbalance of information and power.
Anything that significantly threatens that imbalance will be met with extreme prejudice. JA overplayed his hand and underestimated the willingness of those involved to absorb casualties in order to stem the proliferation of infrastructure which might work against that treasured monopoly of coercion.
Encryption, distributed systems, anonymous networks, and related technologies are the only effective means to provide a counter to the asymmetric threats that endanger our personal agency.
These technologies are much more important to a free society than any possible harm that they may facilitate. Those harms existed before the internet, and will not go away if they are made slightly more difficult.
The ability to pervasively maintain an efficiently functioning surveillance state requires the internet, and P/A technologies are critical to countering the efficiency of this capability.
Nope. "Nice" only comes if they are exchanged. Otherwise just rot in jail.
Here here, well said.
The act happened on a computer system with-in US jurisdiction.
See also "Three North Korean Military Hackers Indicted in Wide-Ranging Scheme to Commit Cyberattacks and Financial Crimes Across the Globe":
> Indictment Expands 2018 Case that Detailed Attack on Sony Pictures and Creation of WannaCry Ransomware by Adding Two New Defendants and Recent Global Schemes to Steal Money and Cryptocurrency from Banks and Businesses while Operating in North Korea, China
* https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/three-north-korean-military-h...
* https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/17/north-kor...
* https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56103921
> Every country is potentially spying on every other country and it doesn't even matter if they are supposed to be allies or enemies.
There are 'official' spies that have diplomatic immunity, and so cannot be charged, but can be expelled. The 'unofficial' spies can certainly be charged:
* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/29/fbi-breaks-up-...
When it comes to cyber-y stuff, certainly countries work against each other, but if it's a "group" that is doing the attacks, it may be hard to identify the individuals, but when they are identified, they can be charged:
* https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/25/china_apt31_charges/
So let's say I google some information about Koran and find a website with Koran, analysis etc. Turns out it's hosted in Saudi Arabia, and the act of me, an atheist, reading Koran is blasphemy, punishable with death.
So should I be extradited to Saudi Arabia, given that the act happened on a computer system with-in Saudi Arabia?
IANAL: AIUI, extradition generally only occurs if the (alleged) action is a crime in both jurisdiction.
> If Country A has no laws against blasphemy, for example, a lack of double criminality could prevent a suspect from being extradited from Country A to face blasphemy charges in another country, i.e. no outbound extradition from Country A, and neither are citizens of Country A eligible for international prisoner transfers from another country having criminally convicted them for blasphemy, i.e. no inbound prisoner transfer to Country A.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_criminality
Blasphemy (against the Quran) is not a crime in (e.g.) the US, so generally you could not be extradited from there for it. Also, there is no the treaty:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia–United_States_rel...
Whereas (say) unauthorized computer access is a crime in many places, and so it could be a mutual-crime eligible for extradition.
Of course if you live in Country A and are charged in Country B which has no treaty with A, you could potentially (IANAL) be arrested in Country C—which does have a treaty with B—if you were travelling there.
I think it's a miscarriage of justice that Assange is just sitting in jail. At the same time, his defenders don't admit that he solicited and provided technical assistance to Americans who expressed interest in stealing secrets. Plus he's almost certainly a creep. The condom-removal allegations are very likely true. While not relevant to his crimes, this makes him much less sympathetic.
Edit: I see the law is catching up there: https://apnews.com/article/health-crime-california-gavin-new...
Saying Assange "shared" secrets seems incorrect. Manning shared secrets with Assange so that Assange could publish them.
Punishing Manning surely scared those considering sharing secrets. Punishing Assange would frighten those considering publishing secrets, something the US has generally been unable to freely do.
I say that, but my post also could use clarification. The US has typically been unable to scare publishers of documents, the last time they really tried was with the Pentagon Papers and the Supreme Court ruled they couldn't punish publishers.
This isn't as crazy as it sounds because the Roman Empire had provinces which were technically "independent" monarchies aligned with Rome. Most famously, Egypt under Cleopatra and Judea under Herod.
You're going to have to write a book or two of argumentation, because you seem like you're drawing parallels between intersecting lines
Maybe we really do need a little dance with authoritarianism here to remind people what that is.
Even its allies aren't free of government interference from the US.
But US allies are not "free" in the sense that they can't do something that the US really doesn't like. Japan's government, for example, would not be trying to repeal its pacifist constitution unless they had the US's blessing to re-militarize.
Basically, there are 2 different senses in which a country can be called "free". But even in the individual liberty sense, a libertarian (either of the Ron Paul or Noam Chomsky variants) would not consider the US or any of its allies to be free and acting like they are libertarian countries is a good way to become a martyr.
Arguably, this is bullshit. The UK might be dangerously friendly with the US on multiple fronts, but e.g. France has refused to extradite Polanski forever, refuses to hand over control of their nukes to NATO, and pursues an independent but aligned foreign policy to the US.
While US would prosecute him if they could , they have not tried anywhere as hard to extradite him like they are doing with Assange .
Assange is not a UK citizen , UK has some of the weirdest privacy and human rights laws they are not fully part of EHCR anymore and actively trying to deport refugees to Rwanda , France is hardly in the same category as UK .
I wouldn’t characterize UK as country with strong human rights they are pretty exploitative (see how they treated windrush generation or the Gurkhas )
Crimes that directly threaten the sovereign are always the most serious crimes especially if they involve waging war against it or undermining its war effort. This is a constant throughout all societies. The next most serious class of crimes would be those that undermine the state's control of the financial system which is critical to its power. That's also why the US government has thrown the book at those who trespassed in the Capitol as part of a comically incompetent attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Likewise, intentional tax evasion is going to get the book thrown at you. When the state feels genuinely threatened, "human rights" and "constitutional rights" are irrelevant and will be "interpreted" to allow whatever the state wishes to do.
Really? It doesn't seem that way at all to me, it seems only few rioters have been given a slap on the wrist, none of the key organizers are in jail, neither is head of the moment, many of them who attempted to overthrow the government are serving in congress even now. The leader is the presumptive nominee of a major political party and openly talks about being a dictator when elected. Not one have been disqualified under 14th amendment and does not look at all likely before the election.
The extremely slow speed and ineptitude at which the system has moved so far is just astonishing and is completely counter to your point on Government moves faster, harder when its survival is at stake, compare that to say how quickly Brazil has reacted to a similar attempt by Jair Bolsonaro.
> far more serious a crime than (allegedly) raping a child because
It is sad that we have come far to these days characterize actions by foreign reporters not subject to any U.S. law whatsoever and who merely published and did not leak themselves damning evidence of atrocities and war crimes committed in violation of Geneva convention of which US is a signatory as crimes.
Also I cannot but help notice that you feel need to say allegedly about an horrific incident in which no one disputes the facts, but afford no such benefit of doubt to Assange.
This gives the spy protection as both sides are spying on each other so usually what happens is some snarky comment/strongly worded letter and expulsion of a few spies back to their home country from both sides.
In the worst case someone goes to prison but usually in response the other side also finds some spies to put into prison too as "revenge".
Also whatever information the spies manage to get in general is not released to the public.
The fact that he has been imprisoned in the UK without trial or conviction for the last four years is insane (he has been imprisoned for 5 years but the first year was for a bail violation). This should simply not be possible in a modern liberal democracy.
This is the best possible outcome from the standpoint of the US national security machine -- that he remains imprisoned indefinitely while waiting on a Kafka-esque system to finally grind him to mush, and serves as a dire warning to other journalists who would defy them.
That said, I don't believe that a fair and impartial trail will guarantee an acquittal. But although the national security apparatus is arrayed against him, there's still a judge and a jury and a trial -- this will not be a military tribunal.
The closest comparisons to his situation would be Ellsberg, and less like Manning or Winner, both of whom were employees of the US government. Ellsberg's case was dismissed, and Winer pled guilty; only Manning was convicted at trial.
Being extradited would also be his best chance of being free on bail during trial, although this outcome, despite representing his best chance, is not very likely.
One of the conditions for the appeal is that Assange be granted 1st amendments rights, since the USG had argued that it wouldn’t be relevant because he wasn’t a US citizen, as well as assurances that a death penalty could not be applied in any case.
The USG has found the Assange and Snowden cases, and their continuing “limbo” status to be a very effective deterrent to any journalists, especially those who are not US citizens, or whistleblowers, from taking action on USG classified material, regardless of how damning it might be.
That's the beauty of jury trials. Both side (defense and prosecutor) has to agree who will determine guilty/non-guilty. If it was judge, he is beholden to power structures and pressure.
Johnny Depp and Rittenhouse also got a fair trial (at least IMO) despite media frenzy.
> Julian will face the same court that unfairly convicted me. He will not receive an impartial jury.
> The jury pool from which they will be selecting in the Eastern District of Virginia is made up of individuals who all have some sort of tie — family, their own experience — to the intelligence community or the military apparatus there. And they’re familiar with security clearances. And so that already creates a bias because individuals are not going to want to do anything that may make them look bad, when it becomes time for their security assessment. These individuals know nothing about Julian Assange, other than what our politicians and prosecutors have been saying for years and years — that he’s a terrorist, for the most part.
> Another key aspect is that there are certain constitutional rights that I should have been guaranteed during my trial — facing all of the evidence, and understanding and having all of the prosecution case put before me. Yet that was not the case. Mr Assange will have no guarantees of any constitutional protections, should he be tried in the Eastern District of Virginia.
> I think that court has, time and time again, shown itself to be pro-CIA and pro-US government, and pretty much allowed the government to rule the case and take it in whatever direction they want. And that’s going to be to paint Julian in the worst light, with a favorable jury, and, overall, to go for a conviction.
https://jacobin.com/2021/04/cia-whistleblower-julian-assange...
I don't think Assange compares to Depp or Rittenhouse. Sure, there was media frenzy around the latter two, but the government didn't have the same kind of interest in seeing them punished.
The best outcome would be for the UK to uphold its own treaties, refuse to extradite Assange, and allow him to walk free. Anything less would be a travesty and miscarriage of justice.
The idea that the US would try him in the Eastern District of Virginia "Espionage Court", only to throw up their hands in defeat when Assange's lawyers point out that his persecution is illegal, is laughable. If he is extradited, he will rot in a supermax prison, which from first hand testimony[1] is far worse than even Belmarsh.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/the-last-days-of-julian-assan...
If the UK refuses to extradite him, then it's a matter of his looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life waiting for the hood and a chopper out. Besides, I have no faith in the UK court' ability to do anything here; they're the ones who have held him without trial or conviction all this time anyway.
I admit that some of my desire here is selfish -- I feel that Assange being tried and acquitted is a greater win for journalism in the US and is worth the risk. Obviously as an individual he does not agree with this (thus his opposition to extradition in the first place).
I do feel that the current status quo is the most favorable in creating the chilling effect that the US national security establishment wants to convey -- Manning and Winner both served their time and are free now; if Assange had been able to foresee what his life would look like now in 2010, he probably would have chosen to turn himself in to the US authorities in the first place, because even were he convicted he'd be free by now.
I find this assessment to be unsupported.
Name a single journalist successfully prosecuted under the Espionage Act. If you have to go back to the 1920s to find an example, then I think I've made my point. Ellsberg was the only journalist in modern times to even be charged under it, and his charges were dismissed.
He's just some foreign civilian who aided Manning in obtaining state secrets and then published those state secrets on his blog.
He doesn't/didn't work for a recognised journalistic organisation, he doesn't belong to a journalist union or professional body, he doesn't hold a qualification in journalism. He's "just a blogger" and so none of the precedents matter.
It's not something that the US govt gets to decide. They can argue it in court, but this sort of finding of fact is a matter for the jury, not for the prosecutor or even the judge to decide. Unless he opts for a bench trial, in which case the judge gets to decide, but that is at his option -- nobody can force him to forgo a jury.
Ellsberg did not receive automatic protections as a journalist either, despite the fact that he was by any definition a journalist (and certainly by your criteria) -- he was charged and tried under the Espionage Act, and only the specific circumstances involved resulted in the case's dismissal.
The government will not put all its eggs in the "he's not a journalist" basket either; they'll offer an array of charges so even if the jury finds that he is a journalist, he will not be completely shielded. Nonetheless I think the odds are in his favor; the government will in the end almost certainly have to show evidence of tangible (not just reputational) harm, and that will open the door to "compelling public interest" arguments based on the particular information brought to light.
In his shoes, given that we already know the US govt had a plan to poison and/or kidnap him, I would not trust that I'd receive a fair trial in the USA.
There is no separate legal system for journalists. The charge is a brand new one, so there is no precedent to ignore. Nobody, journalist or otherwise, has ever been tried under the espionage act for publishing classified material.
His charges were dismissed after the Judge refused to allow him to present a defense. And they were dismissed because the FBI had illegally wiretapped him, not because of anything to do with the case itself.
It's already come out that Assange was constantly wiretapped throughout his stay at the Ecuadorian embassy, including during meetings with his lawyer. Do you think the US would be pushing extradition if they thought a judge would dismiss the case based on that?
Just because they don't think it will happen does not mean that it will not happen. Nonetheless, you are correct -- Ellsberg was not acquitted, so there was no precedent set, and no guarantee that Assange will be acquitted or have his charges dismissed for similar cause.
All I'm saying is that we don't have a precedent, so it is very far from obvious that the result of a trial would be a conviction. Even the case against Ellsberg was stronger, since he had direct access to the information through his work at RAND.
'The point of foreseeability had not been countered. There was no effort made to counter it. In 2010 it could not have been foreseen that publication would bring espionage charges against the publisher. It had never happened before. Encouraging a whistleblower to produce documents was definitely not unprecedented. That was an absurd claim. It was everyday journalistic activity, as witnesses had testified. No witnesses had been produced to say the opposite.'
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/02/assange-fina...
And where is he now?
Lol... They would send him in a secret military prison... That would be the worst outcome possible... He should have went where Snowden wanted to go or where he is by accident
Assange is a public figure; if extradited he will have a trial, and if convicted will go to the same federal prisons that all people convicted for federal crimes go to.
The US has engaged in "extraordinary rendition" (many of which we only know about because of Assange). I'm not defending their record here, but Assange is not a candidate for anything like that -- he is a public figure.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-827_i426.pdf
"On appeal, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the District Court that much of the information sought by Zubaydah was protected from disclosure by the state secrets privilege, but the panel majority concluded that the District Court had erred when it dismissed the case. It believed that the state secrets privilege did not apply to publicly known information.
...
Here, the information held by the Ninth Circuit to be nonprivileged would necessarily tend to confirm (or deny) that the CIA maintained a detention site in Poland. The Government has shown that such information — even if already made public through unofficial sources — could significantly harm national security.
...
Here, the state secrets privilege applies to the existence (or non- existence) of a CIA facility in Poland, and therefore precludes further discovery into all three categories of information the Ninth Circuit concluded to be nonprivileged.
...
This case is remanded with instructions to dismiss Zubaydah’s current application for discovery under §1782. P. 18. "
It is remotely possible that they could amend the charges to include "providing material support for terrorism", in which case they could attempt to try him in military court. That's a worst case / best case situation -- he has the least rights as a defendant under the MCA system, but if the attempt is thwarted by the courts then it would be a huge blow against the government's attempts to circumvent due process.
wow, you really trust American institutions. but most of the people doesn't and for good reasons.
The treatment of Manning should be sufficient evidence to deny the claim that Assange would receive a fair trial and treatment as a prisoner that is compatible with human rights (i.e. that excludes torture). But given that the judgement argues that even the plans to assassinate him were justified, I doubt this will be given any consideration.
Assange faces bog standard criminal charges in the US that have proceeded through our standard courts. The extradition is being overseen by 2 separate court systems in 2 separate nations.
Which is ridiculous given that Assange was also not in the USA. Somehow US law applies to him when he has nothing to do with the USA, but not to people imprisoned on a US government facility by the US government.
If the DOJ cannot prove that Assange's role was fundamental to enabling the offenses, and Assange can prove instead that he merely published information that could have become available to anyone, the case as I understand it fails.
Funny enough it’s likely a tactic that works! He’s likely to end up not doing any US time!
The guy is in talks right now with the DOJ for a misdemeanor plea, a mercy termination of a prosecution in which the accused appears to have voluntarily served out the sentence pre-trial. If the extradition had gone perfectly smoothly, the C.W. seems to be that he would have been facing single-digit years. Assange is not in fact all that important.
I wonder what would happen if the US gave these assurances then broke them ?
Also, what kind of sentence would Julian face even if he get these assurances ? Could it be anything lower than life in jail ?
I thought that was the case but I think Assange proves that's not as strong as many expected. I think it was reasonable to expect him being extradited 10 years ago, it's surprising he hasn't been yet.
What I do think the US achieved was pressuring the UK into not extraditing him to Sweden. He was charged with crimes there that seemed much more clear cut – not espionage, just a regular case that anyone else would be extradited for. Whether you think that was a conspiracy or not, in isolation it was a justified extradition with no safety concerns, so the US clearly has some sway in preventing it.
The English courts are permitted to take into account whether assurances for previous extraditions have been complied with:
> When considering the adequacy of an assurance in any particular case, the courts should place appropriate weight on any assurance previously obtained in extradition requests from the same requesting country.
http://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2016-0191...
...this is of little comfort to Assange, but it does mean that there is an incentive for the country issuing the assurances to comply with them, otherwise their future extradition requests have a greatly increased chance of being denied.
Regarding the death penalty part: extraditions from Germany (and probably all of Europe) would immediately stop in capital cases. Those all rely on American assurances, and the first time it's broken, courts will disregard them for a long time.
With that so large in the rear view mirror, are they really in a position to start defying the US on extraditions? The US will claim this is a special case and Germany will probably go with it in practice.
Also, if a hypothetical US pipeline had been attacked by a large nuclear armed adversary, pretty sure that country would still be on the map...
Doesn't have to be the same country. There is a bit of history in recent times; US went in to Afghanistan to find Osama and Iraq to find WMD. Turned out both were only to be found in Pakistan.
Nuclear weapons in Pakistan isn't anything new (but the US was surprised quite a while back when Pakistan tested a fusion weapon).
The US has a history of just doing what it wants in Europe when it comes to renditions (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition [0]). It isn't out of the question that they just grab these people and the judiciary can go sort itself out. There were reports that they were considering assassinating Assange and being done with it. I assume the fact he isn't much of a threat going forward and that his miserable existence is an object lesson in defying the US stood him in good stead against those ideas.
[0] I liked the 2006 resolution that called on that the US to stop doing these things and apologise. The good old fashioned sternly worded letter is one of my favourite parts of politics.
If you're arguing that the German judiciary had influence over the fate of Khaled El-Masri then I'm not sure how the argument is meant to hang together. They seem to have been powerless in that instance. The outcome depended on the CIA's judgement.
The problem is which country? No one seems to know who did it.
Assange should be brought back to Australia.
It shows how much Australian politicians and politics kowtow to the US.
It's shameful.
https://www.reuters.com/world/australia-pm-backs-parliament-...
This is the ultimate evidence that there is no such thing as a free press; People are only allowed to report what their masters allow them to. The day you cross a line and in Assange's case, the day you report the crimes commited by The Empire, they crush you.
US generally doesn't persecute it's citizens for reporting. See Pentagon papers.
Assange is not US citizen. Guantanamo bay detainees weren't US citizens. They are free targets.
>allegations that in 2010, Assange offered to help Manning, the Army intelligence analyst, crack a password to break into a classified U.S. government network, an act that would have gone beyond journalism.
People report crimes committed by the empire all the time without difficulties. Here's a wikipedia with some for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
1. Other parties are seemingly more responsible than Assange in releasing of unredacted cables, and yet these parties are seemingly not subject to repercussions. For example, the journalists who published in a book a password they had been given to decrypt an archive of unredacted cables.[1, 2] The Wikileaks volunteer who without Assange's permission provided unredacted cables to a different journalist.[3] Other parties who published the unredacted cables before Wikileaks did, using the password leaked by the journalists.[1]
2. In Manning's sentencing, a court was told by the US government that no reprisals were known to have occurred to Afghan civilians helping the US as a result of the Afghan War Logs leak.[3] By contrast there are publicly reported instances of Afghans who helped the US during the war being left behind and then beheaded [5] and tortured [6] by the Taliban. Coalition partners (UK, AU, etc) were not at all happy about this Afghanistan exit!
The UK requiring a specialty assurance seemingly forces the US to forfeit additional charges secretly sought to be added, for example, charges for Vault 7 leaks. And even if Assange was extradited to the US, the US has provided the UK with assurance that he'd be sent back over to Australia where "Free Assange" graffiti is everywhere and Assange is possibly the only issue that the Greens and National parties will ever agree upon.[7] Picture Trump and Biden traveling together and lobbying together in the same room for the same cause.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cable...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks:_Inside_Julian_Assan...
[3] https://www.wired.com/2011/09/unauthorized-assange-memoir/
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/bradley-mannin...
[5] https://nypost.com/2021/07/24/translator-who-worked-for-us-a...
[6] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghanistan-interpreter-taliban...
[7] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/05/austr...
A publisher is allowed to publish state secrets if they aren't the ones who originally obtained them.
The US govt will argue that none of the journalism precedents apply.
You can't get any more naive than that :)
Assange has building size graffiti murals in Moscow.
Wake me up when the court renders decision that he is.
And even if he is it should have no relation to this particular case.
Word to Russia: "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye." (Matthew 7:3-5, English Standard Version.)
I mean, look, the US should be judged for how it upholds its own values, and it does so less than perfectly. It justly deserves condemnation for when and where it falls short of its own stated values. But Russia... does Russia really want countries to be judged by freedom of speech?