Five major Western news organizations have finally spoken out for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and are calling on the US government to drop the charges against him.
In a letter to the US government, the editors and publishers of The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, DER SPIEGEL, and El País said that “publishing is not a crime” and that it was time for the US “to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.”
The five news outlets benefited greatly from documents released by WikiLeaks and worked with the organization to publish State Department cables in a release known as “Cable Gate.” The letter explains that for receiving those leaks and the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs from whistleblower Chelsea Manning, Assange has faced “the most severe consequences.”
The letter reads: “On 12 April 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 organized crime groups.”
While being held in Belmarsh Prison on no charges, Assange has been subject to psychological torture, a UN special rapporteur has determined. If extradited to the US, he could face up to 175 years in a maximum security prison.
The US Department of Justice indicted Assange under the Espionage Act even though he used standard journalistic practices to receive the information he published. The letter explains that the Obama administration refrained from seeking Assange’s indictment due to the precedent it could set and that the Trump administration decided to pursue charges.
“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 1), which has never been used to prosecute a publisher or broadcaster,” the news organizations said.
The Trump administration’s decision to indict Assange was likely related to WikiLeaks’ publication of documents that detailed the CIA’s hacking tools, known as Vault 7. While there was nothing illegal about the release, and Assange is being charged for unrelated leaks, Vault 7 enraged the CIA and then-Director Mike Pompeo.
Last year, in a bombshell report, Yahoo News revealed that the CIA under Pompeo plotted to kidnap and discussed assassinating Assange over the release of Vault 7. The report has been cited by Assange’s legal team to argue against the UK’s former Home Secretary’s decision to extradite him to the US, which is currently being appealed.
I agree! Let him go.
You know, when someone is being tortured you don’t get any credit for waiting years and years to speak up about it. So I guess Biden may be looking at some form of pardon, though I wouldn’t bet on it, so the state media organs are trying to give him cover. The NYT, WP, NBC and all the others can KMA.
Roght, it’s patently not as access of moral courage.
Exactly what I was thinking. It’s more like moral virtue signaling.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/most-people-consider-themselves-to-be-morally-superior/
They are doing it because NATO’s “Drang nach Osten” is failing and all the world is seeing that US regime is not only repressive and pro-Nazi, but also weak. So, they need to do something to improve a bit their image.
Yes, Biden who has brought in five million illegal aliens into the US in just two years and says he wants Whites to become a minority is “pro-Nazi”.
I oppose Kiev’s attacks on Donbass. But the Russian line that Kiev is “nazi” is laughable propaganda. Used by those few leftists in the West who oppose the Biden-funded Kiev – while 99.9% of leftists support Kiev against Russia. Are those social democrats and communists “pro-Nazi”?
Stick to reality. There are some nationalists who praise Stepan Bandera in Ukraine, notably in the Azov Battalion and the Kraken and the like. These are a small minority. The PRESIDENT of Ukraine condemns those who praise Bandera. So does the Israeli-Ukrainian oligarch who funded his campaign. But they work with them – including them as a small minority in the military. The ONLY nationalist seat in parliament is held by the more mainstream Svoboda Party. That means it’s a “pro-Nazi” government? Financed by Biden, supported by Kamala Harris, Antony Blinken, George Soros, Nancy Pelosi, Macron, Olaf Sholz? Ridiculous.
You may call the Azov Battalion a small minority, but they hold sway over Z. There were plenty of Banderites scurrying around the streets of Kiev in the evenings of the coup of 2014, praising Bandera, cornering separatists in a building and incinerating those inside. The Italian police arrested a group in Italy who were there to perpetrate terrorist measures.
Almost everyone I know on the left opposes the US involvement in Ukraine. But those I know personally are working class people with no power or voice. You are conflating reality with the 99 percent of status quo “leftists” who have clout.
Yes, Biden who has brought in five million illegal aliens into the US in just two years
did you count the illegal aliens? or did fox news count them.
google = Of the 1.66 million migrants encountered in FY 2021, about two-thirds of all encounters by the Border Patrol between ports of entry resulted in migrants being immediately expelled.
also google = For the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2022, CBP stopped migrants more than 2,766,582 times, compared to 1.72 million times for fiscal 2021,
Even if there was such a thing as an “illegal alien” (the US Constitution says no), Biden has “brought” precisely zero of them into the US. They’re coming whether he wants them to or not, and he’s had more of them abducted/deported in the same period of time than either Obama or Trump did.
Why would it possibly matter what the skin color of the population is?
By pro-Nazi I mean their support of Kiev neo-Nazi regime. In US, as far as I know, neither Russians, nor any other minority is persecuted because of the ethnic identity. I wrote already about that: American politics in Europe and the cultivation and support of neo-Nazism is similar to American politics in Latin America, where US were always supporting the fascists against the socialists. The reason is: the fascist regimes are more profitable for American big business than the socialist ones. The socialist independent countries like China, Vietnam and Cuba don’t fit for unipolar world dominated by US. Also, Libyan Islamist socialism was dangerous for US oligarchy and that was the reason why they destroyed Libya. So, supporting Nazism and fascism is quite traditional for US foreign politics.
There is no sense to argue about whether Kiev regime is Nazi or not. Those who say Kiev regime is not Nazi, either don’t know enough about the nature of Kiev regime or they say it because they are themselves sympathizing Ukrainian neo-Nazism. All the world sees it as it is and that is the main reason of anti-US feelings in the so called Third World.
The Julian Assange case has hardly been mentioned in the mainstream western media, so it is encouraging to see that five most famous news papers are now clamouring for the release from prison of this brave editor/journalist.
Criminal governments dislike having their standard practices exposed. Go figure.
It’s amazing how successive US administrations have danced around the war crimes that were committed after 9/11, starting with the invasion of Afghanistan in the first place. That Assange presumed to point a finger at these crimes and has been locked up ever since underscores the futility of our illustrious alternative media, including antiwar.com, to lift the lid on the lies and atrocities that the USA has committed in the past two decades. In a different century he would have been burned at the stake for heresy so I guess he’s getting off easy.
The biggest war crime by us was the dropping of the nuclear weapons on the civilians of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Truman thought it was OK to incinerate our POWs there as well. Tibbetts, the pilot of the Enola Gay was made a hero for the mission. He even said he would do it again.
True enough, but Assange is being persecuted for exposing the war crimes of this century, the ones that were conveniently swept under the rug with the official narrative of 9/11. It’s become an article of faith that Moslems were somehow the perps of 9/11 when the real perps are laughing at us for our naivety.
i bet that the real 9/11 perps are laughing even harder at the ineffectualness of those of us who see through the deception than they are at the naive ones
The most tragic thing, V?…
It was all a show for Stalin.
Does that meet the definition of “virtue signaling?” Brought to you by the same outlets that have been as loyal to the war propaganda as they could have been. They are some of the most despicable people on Earth. But they learned from the best. All it takes is to timely bring up student loan forgiveness only to dismiss it on technicalities after the midterm elections. One of our colleagues here coined it as “floating balloons.”
Better late than never , i would say guilty consciences played a part in this .
Yeah majority of these rags are propaganda pushers for the Anglo-American empire so excuse me if I don’t believe they have any kind of genuine concern for imprisoned journalists. In fact, I believe it’s a cheap promotion trick to keep themselves relevant and a pitiful attempt at reputation maintenance. These cowards don’t care about anyone beside themselves.
You SAID it all!
PS May I ask you your name in English in order that I may address you by it ?
My user name? It’s Ivan
Pleased to make your acquaintance, Ivan 🙂
just go like this = Иван
All have previous editorial support for dropping charges against Assange. The issue is where are the rest of the news media?
This is a stain on the Trump Administration. Trump was fine with the leaks of Democratic Party emails. If anyone should know how vindictive and reckless the intelligence community can be, it should be Trump.
So, we have on one side pro-MIC Trump and on the other side the vindictive and reckless intelligence community. Difficult choice indeed.
By the way, both MIC and the intelligence community are making money from US budget and they both are not interested in the peaceful evolution of the world.
Major newspapers supporting journalistic freedom? Some mistake, surely!