An Internet publisher who detested official secrets, he became well-known after secret documents about US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were leaked in 2010. He posted the content on his website, which featured a video of Iraqi civilians being killed by fire from a helicopter.
Prior to President Obama commuting the sentence, one of his accomplices, US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, was given a 35-year prison term. The 52-year-old Assange, who has been battling extradition for the previous five years in a British prison, is relieved to have reached a plea agreement with the United States. He had previously sought asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy for seven years after being accused of rape in Sweden, a charge he disputed.
Source: Al Jazeera
Because of his activity, Assange became a celebrity among supporters of press freedom, who said that his reporting on US military wrongdoing was exactly what journalists were supposed to do. His followers view him as a defender of free speech who calls attention to power abuses and hypocrisy.
He is seen as a villain in the US for carelessly jeopardising national security. In 2022, the British government issued an extradition decree. Two judges ruled last month that Assange might file an appeal to address the issue of whether the First Amendment’s safeguards for free expression would apply to him as a foreign defendant in the United States.
Source: BBC News
Assange will return to Australia, as Canberra has been urging, and enter a plea deal to admit guilt to a single charge of breaking the espionage legislation. How the story would unfold in the upcoming US presidential elections is hard to predict. When Wikileaks published emails in 2016 that might have hurt Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency and helped Donald Trump, suspicions were raised about possible Russian intervention. Paradoxically, Trump pursued Assange.
What do you think about this? Comment below.
