New Delhi: Britain on Friday approved the handing over of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US. Assange is facing espionage charges in a case that could prove to be an unprecedented legal battle for press freedom rights. In 2009, WikiLeaks stunned the world by publishing nearly 750,000 US intelligence documents and diplomatic cables detailing the torture and covert military operations of US military personnel.
Chelsea Manning, a US military intelligence officer, was arrested and sentenced to prison for leaking intelligence files to WikiLeaks. According to a report in NDTV, US officials allege that Assange helped him break the passcode of the Pentagon computer system and instigated Manning to steal the files. In April 2019, the US Justice Department requested the extradition of Assange from Britain on charges of conspiracy to break into a confidential computer system to obtain information related to national defense.
After this, the department charged Assange with 17 counts under the US Espionage Act. The US says that Australian citizen Assange stole US defense and national security intelligence and disclosed it publicly, putting the US, its officials, and intelligence sources at risk.
When Assange created WikiLeaks in 2006, it was a new type of activity. It was a website that collected secret documents and published them online. This method was not much different from the traditional media. In this sense, Assange’s activities can be protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which explicitly guarantees freedom of the press. Assange is accused of receiving and publishing intelligence material from government sources.
The government of Barack Obama, who was president from 2009 to 2017, chose not to push for Assange’s case. They wanted to avoid this constitutional battle of what is journalism and what is not. While Republican President Donald Trump took a tough stance, calling Assange a foreign threat and WikiLeaks a “hostile intelligence service”. The Trump administration said that it takes seriously the role of journalists in a democracy. But Julian Assange is no journalist.
If Assange is deported to the US, he will be tried in a federal court. Assange would face up to five years in prison on the original charge of helping him attempt to break into Pentagon computers but could face up to 175 years in prison for charges under the Espionage Act. If seen in this way, he will have to spend the rest of his life in jail.
