It is one year since WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange became a free man again. When he addressed the Council of Europe last October, he was unable to speak about the years he had spent incarcerated in the UK, facing allegations of Espionage Act violations and computer intrusion.
“I am not yet fully equipped to speak about what I have endured – the relentless struggle to stay alive, both physically and mentally,” he said. “Nor can I speak yet about the deaths by hanging, murder and medical neglect of my fellow prisoners.”
When I heard his words, for a moment, my mind went back over the ordeal Assange had gone through since 2010, when he and WikiLeaks began publishing secret US documents.
The arbitrary detention he endured for almost a decade, the smear campaign against him and WikiLeaks, CIA plans to kill or kidnap him revealed by protected witnesses, the Espionage Act charges, the risk of spending his life entombed in a US supermax prison, the five years and two months spent in Britain’s toughest prison, Belmarsh, and the grave decline in his health.
In May 2019, 52-year-old Assange was publicly charged by the United States Department of Justice with 17 counts under the US Espionage Act 1917 and one count under the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act over WikiLeaks’ 2010 publication of documents leaked by US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
FOIA battle reveals authorities destroyed key documents
As an investigative journalist and media partner of WikiLeaks, who published the same secret US documents but did not go through a similar ordeal, I have always felt it my duty to investigate the legal and extra-legal tactics used against Assange and the WikiLeaks journalists.
It was this desire to unearth the truth that convinced me to embark on a 10-year Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) battle in the US, Britain, Sweden and Australia, represented by such excellent lawyers as British barrister Estelle Dehon KC of Cornerstone Barristers, and American lawyers Lauren Russell and Alia Smith of Ballard Spahr.
Thanks to this trench warfare to unearth the truth, it has been possible to reveal the role of the British authorities, including the Crown Prosecution Service, in creating the legal paralysis that kept Assange arbitrarily detained in London, and that they destroyed key documents on the case.
This process has also brought to light that the Swedish authorities destroyed thousands of key documents and, finally, that the US authorities had planned to detain the WikiLeaks founder at the US border in July 2010, before WikiLeaks had revealed the secret reports on the war in Afghanistan.
Still the same person with humour intact
When Assange was finally free and gave testimony before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg last October, 14 years had passed since I had last met him as a free man on 28 September 2010.
From that time, we had always met in confined places, either when he was under house arrest or when he was at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where we met repeatedly until five months before his arrest.
When Assange was freed and WikiLeaks informed me we could finally meet, as I stepped out of the building after our meeting, I could scarcely believe that there were no walls preventing him from doing the same.
Each time we had met previously, I had thought about how painful it was for him to remain confined between four walls, day after day, year after year, with no end in sight. But this time he could go out, walk freely, enjoy the sun, and spend time with his family and friends. I just couldn’t believe it. At the same time, I had one serious concern: would he be the same person I had known before?
When we met, he was brilliant, relaxed and had not lost his sense of humour. The hardship he had gone through had not made him hard.
We did not discuss any of his future plans. He enjoys nature, his wife Stella and their two sons. Should he decide to spend the rest of his life swimming in the ocean and walking in the woods, who could question that choice? He has already given so much and sacrificed so many years of his life.
Assange and the WikiLeaks journalists fought a battle against state secrecy – secrecy that is used not to protect the safety and security of citizens, but is abused to cover up state criminality – and won. They opened a deep and enduring crack in malign state secrecy.
It is paradoxical that the man who won the battle against state secrecy may himself become a victim of state secrecy. Assange’s plea deal does not allow him even to file a Freedom of Information Act request to acquire information on his persecution.
In addition, as our FOIA litigation revealed, thousands of key documents on his case were destroyed by British and Swedish authorities. And now, the US authorities at the State Department are trying to keep key documentation classified and to stop the release of unclassified files.
The department is opposing the release of documents on the investigation into WikiLeaks, on Assange’s travels, and even on foreign government perceptions and reactions to the WikiLeaks disclosures, arguing that their release “could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to national security”.
If the State Department’s arguments prevail in the US FOIA litigation, the truth about the persecution of Assange and the WikiLeaks journalists will never see the light of day.
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