A lot of relief… and a lot of hypocrisy

Julian Assange is officially free, 12 years after he escaped the clutches of the United States for publishing hundreds of thousands of documents (seven of which were held in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and five in prisons in the British capital) that proved the crimes committed by invading American soldiers against Afghans and Iraqis.

The WikiLeaks founder chose to be tried in the closest U.S. jurisdiction to his native Australia — the Mariana Islands in the South Pacific — which reveals his logical fear of setting foot on the mainland territory of a country that applies laws at its discretion, and imposes the death penalty if prosecutors or judges are in a bad mood.

Once released, Assange will be able to visit the United States without any problems (the United States does not allow retrials of cases already tried); but don’t let anyone be fooled: Assange has not been pardoned by President Joe Biden, just as Barack Obama pardoned Chelsea Manning, the soldier who passed hundreds of thousands of secret documents to WikiLeaks.

What Biden did (in what seemed like an electoral endorsement of the left-wing section of the Democratic Party, angry at its capitulation to Israel) was to ask the US Department of Justice to apply the softest interpretation of the law, so that, in the event that he pleaded guilty, the five years Assange spent in a British prison would be his punishment, and he would automatically go free.

Here’s the thing: Assange pleads guilty and is released; personal freedom, because the bad news is that after pleading guilty, investigative journalism will continue to be threatened by powerful countries that will criminally persecute those who denounce their country’s crimes.

Assange could have been in a much worse situation anyway. Donald Trump could have become president but ended up spending old age in a US prison (although not in the electric chair, since he was obliged to abide by an extradition agreement with the UK, which prohibits the death penalty).

In his brief statement before a judge in the remote Mariana Islands, Assange did not outright admit to violating the Espionage Act, but rather “pleaded guilty to obtaining national defense information,” as if it were a final, covert revenge against his persecutors. For years, I wanted the rest of the world to finish the sentence he was unable to utter: “guilty of passing to a prominent international media outlet, the United States Department of Defense, information about crimes committed by his troops and which he sought to conceal from the world…until he leaked them to the world.”

Because this is what is really behind the Assange case: how the US government, unable to track down the newspaper that published the documents stolen by Manning while working at the Pentagon (the press is protected by the First Amendment and its freedom of the press), took vicious revenge against the weakest courier, who denied his status as a journalist and accused him of being a hacker (a modern-day spy).

But public opinion should not be fooled: Assange should not be persecuted for espionage at all, let alone end up in prison, because he is not a spy selling secrets to the enemy, but a messenger who revealed big, uncomfortable truths. His release is a relief, but I repeat that the right to know freely remains under threat around the world; in too many countries, journalists are intimidated, imprisoned or murdered with impunity (Mexico is the best example).

That’s why, on the same day that the US did not interfere with Assange, after persecuting him for reporting on the crimes of his soldiers, the White House condemned Putin for censoring 81 European media outlets “so that the Russians do not know the truth about the crimes committed by Russian troops in Ukraine.” The dwarf said to the pot: Don’t come near, you’ll dirty me.

As former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who granted Assange asylum and allowed him to take refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, said, “If Assange had denounced the crimes of China or Russia, he would have a monument in Washington.”

Speaking of pure hypocrisy, the leaders of Cuba and Venezuela, Miguel Díaz-Canel and Nicolás Maduro, who railed against “imperialism” over Assange’s “brutal persecution”, simultaneously dispatched dozens of journalists, bloggers and internet users as they pleaded with the world to help them stop the crimes of their regimes, or simply to help them live freely and democratically.

But these “little Assanges” have no interest, right Obrador?