Julian Assange - All's well that ends well?
After fourteen horrendous years behind bars, in isolation and under constant threat, Julian Assange is finally a free man. Many are celebrating this as a triumphant victory for public pressure and freedom of the press. Is this true - or is something much more dangerous looming?
By Bent Erik Scholz
By Bent Erik Scholz
The story of Julian Assange's persecution due to the publication of extremely unpleasant data about the machinations of the US military reads like a farce - as if Sebastian Fitzek and Dan Brown had arranged to have a joint LSD session and together wrote a completely crazy legal thriller. International authorities and media left no stone unturned in their attempts to publicly dismantle the figure of Assange, including smear campaigns and false accusations - the former UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, documented this three years ago in his book about the Assange case.
At times Julian Assange was portrayed as a deranged, sleazy, unsympathetic person through lies; at other times Swedish authorities constructed an investigation into alleged rape. The basis for this is the statements of two women who, however, do not consider themselves victims of a crime and certainly do not want to file a complaint, but only try to persuade Assange to take an HIV test with the reassurance of the authorities. The investigation was dropped, then resumed, and mutated more and more into harassment until an international arrest warrant was finally issued against Assange due to the alleged risk of flight. Assange had briefly left Sweden during the investigation into his alleged sexual offense. Probably with the express, even written permission of the responsible public prosecutor.
For seven years Julian Assange lived in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, fleeing from the international authorities, until he was arrested by the London police inside the embassy building - a political maneuver by President Lenín Moreno. It later became clear that during his isolation in the embassy he was also being spied on in real time by the US secret service. The very thing that they wanted to pin on Assange was actually being carried out against him by the authorities themselves. This espionage also affected Assange's conversations with German journalists from Norddeutscher Rundfunk. To be clear again: the American secret service spied on German journalists.
Assange suffered enormous health consequences from the permanent psychological stress, but also from being physically locked up. Depression, enormous weight loss, doctors spoke of "cruel and inhumane" treatment. It was a process of attrition that lasted for years by international criminal authorities, which makes Assange's recent release seem like a maneuver.
This is the crux of the story: Julian Assange, who had become increasingly fragile, is only a free man today because he agreed to a deal with the US Department of Justice, which included Assange pleading guilty to publishing military secrets. The US justice system then sentenced him to five years and two months in prison, which is considered to be paid off by the time he had already served in prison in London. Julian Assange is therefore free - but he also has a criminal record.
The deal between Assange and the Department of Justice is a poisonous deal because it opened the door to a precedent. After a decade and a half of harassment, persecution and presumably psychological torture, Julian Assange was so broken that he was forced to his knees and made a confession of guilt. He cannot be blamed for this - the fact that he was prepared to swallow bitter pills for the promise of freedom should not surprise or disappoint anyone. But the poker game that the USA played could have the most terrible consequences. Because Assange's admission of guilt is a capitulation. Because: what was he convicted of?
WikiLeaks had published documents and videos about the behavior of the US military in the first Iraq war and in Afghanistan - for example a half-hour film entitled "Collateral Murder", which shows how several Iraqi civilians and journalists were shot down by an American Apache helicopter in 2007. The soldiers allegedly assumed that the people they had killed were carrying assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. It later emerged that some of the alleged weapons were the journalists' cameras. Several passengers in a passing minibus who had tried to rescue one of the victims were also killed. They were completelyg unarmed.
62 years ago, the then Minister of Defense Franz Josef Strauß became involved in the Spiegel affair, which led to a government crisis and ultimately the formation of a new government. Strauß issued arrest warrants against various Spiegel editors and publisher Rudolf Augstein. An article had previously appeared in the paper about the results of a NATO maneuver, which suggested that the Bundeswehr was unsuitable and poorly equipped in the event of a defense. An investigation into treason was opened. It later emerged that Strauß not only pushed this forward, but had deliberately smuggled information about these legal proceedings past the Minister of Justice appointed by the junior partner.
The result: Franz Josef Strauß was sacked and politically destroyed, and Der Spiegel emerged as the winner of the affair. No main proceedings were opened against the journalists. The attempt to suppress unwelcome journalistic publications about the state and machinations of the military by the state authorities failed here. After the Spiegel affair, freedom of the press was considered to be secure, if not strengthened.
And Assange, whose release is now being celebrated as a victory for freedom of the press? While he himself may now be free again, he is providing the justice system with a threatening example. Since he is now considered to have been legally convicted for exposing American war crimes, even though he has already served his sentence, this means that journalists who publish misconduct and crimes committed by the American armed forces can no longer assume that they are protected from legal repression. Anyone who wants to show the population what the powerful are doing in the name of that same population and are trying to keep quiet about runs the risk of being accused of treason, if not convicted.
Let us be clear: when a military hides something, it is usually not doing so to protect the country, but to protect its own skin. If it is hiding something, it is cruelty and misdeeds that the public should damn well be informed about, because it is their tax money, perhaps even their lives, that feeds this apparatus. So if we are unlucky, the USA has just gained a back door to silence attentive observers and researchers when they come across information for which politicians or the armed forces should be held accountable. State institutions are the only legal entities that can demand, with complete freedom, that their crimes should neither be punished nor disclosed.
This should cause us great concern, especially in view of the possible imminent second term of Donald Trump. We saw the impact that individual rulings in the USA can have on the entire constitutional state, not least through the annulment of the landmark decision in the legal dispute "Roe v. Wade", which completely overturned abortion law. If a US government, especially one led by buffoons of Trump's caliber, can now prohibit investigative journalists from telling humanity what it has a right to know by filing charges of breach of secrecy or even treason, this has an impact on freedom and transparency within a democracy that we can only partially imagine. Especially in foreign policy times as precarious as these.
Imagine if we were kept in the dark when the future of nuclear defense was being debated behind closed doors, war crimes were being planned, and corruption was being approved. Imagine if a government that depends on the favor of the voters could prohibit the press from revealing the true faces of its politicians to the electorate. Imagine what this means for a democracy that can only function if it is based on a people who become mature through information.
It is right and long overdue that Julian Assange is freed. But he should never have been convicted. He made the only possible decision for his peace of mind, his health, his life. We should never forgive the American justice system for extracting an admission of guilt from him disguised as a compromise.
07/04/24
*Bent-Erik Scholz works as a freelancer for RBB
At times Julian Assange was portrayed as a deranged, sleazy, unsympathetic person through lies; at other times Swedish authorities constructed an investigation into alleged rape. The basis for this is the statements of two women who, however, do not consider themselves victims of a crime and certainly do not want to file a complaint, but only try to persuade Assange to take an HIV test with the reassurance of the authorities. The investigation was dropped, then resumed, and mutated more and more into harassment until an international arrest warrant was finally issued against Assange due to the alleged risk of flight. Assange had briefly left Sweden during the investigation into his alleged sexual offense. Probably with the express, even written permission of the responsible public prosecutor.
For seven years Julian Assange lived in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, fleeing from the international authorities, until he was arrested by the London police inside the embassy building - a political maneuver by President Lenín Moreno. It later became clear that during his isolation in the embassy he was also being spied on in real time by the US secret service. The very thing that they wanted to pin on Assange was actually being carried out against him by the authorities themselves. This espionage also affected Assange's conversations with German journalists from Norddeutscher Rundfunk. To be clear again: the American secret service spied on German journalists.
Assange suffered enormous health consequences from the permanent psychological stress, but also from being physically locked up. Depression, enormous weight loss, doctors spoke of "cruel and inhumane" treatment. It was a process of attrition that lasted for years by international criminal authorities, which makes Assange's recent release seem like a maneuver.
This is the crux of the story: Julian Assange, who had become increasingly fragile, is only a free man today because he agreed to a deal with the US Department of Justice, which included Assange pleading guilty to publishing military secrets. The US justice system then sentenced him to five years and two months in prison, which is considered to be paid off by the time he had already served in prison in London. Julian Assange is therefore free - but he also has a criminal record.
The deal between Assange and the Department of Justice is a poisonous deal because it opened the door to a precedent. After a decade and a half of harassment, persecution and presumably psychological torture, Julian Assange was so broken that he was forced to his knees and made a confession of guilt. He cannot be blamed for this - the fact that he was prepared to swallow bitter pills for the promise of freedom should not surprise or disappoint anyone. But the poker game that the USA played could have the most terrible consequences. Because Assange's admission of guilt is a capitulation. Because: what was he convicted of?
WikiLeaks had published documents and videos about the behavior of the US military in the first Iraq war and in Afghanistan - for example a half-hour film entitled "Collateral Murder", which shows how several Iraqi civilians and journalists were shot down by an American Apache helicopter in 2007. The soldiers allegedly assumed that the people they had killed were carrying assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. It later emerged that some of the alleged weapons were the journalists' cameras. Several passengers in a passing minibus who had tried to rescue one of the victims were also killed. They were completelyg unarmed.
62 years ago, the then Minister of Defense Franz Josef Strauß became involved in the Spiegel affair, which led to a government crisis and ultimately the formation of a new government. Strauß issued arrest warrants against various Spiegel editors and publisher Rudolf Augstein. An article had previously appeared in the paper about the results of a NATO maneuver, which suggested that the Bundeswehr was unsuitable and poorly equipped in the event of a defense. An investigation into treason was opened. It later emerged that Strauß not only pushed this forward, but had deliberately smuggled information about these legal proceedings past the Minister of Justice appointed by the junior partner.
The result: Franz Josef Strauß was sacked and politically destroyed, and Der Spiegel emerged as the winner of the affair. No main proceedings were opened against the journalists. The attempt to suppress unwelcome journalistic publications about the state and machinations of the military by the state authorities failed here. After the Spiegel affair, freedom of the press was considered to be secure, if not strengthened.
And Assange, whose release is now being celebrated as a victory for freedom of the press? While he himself may now be free again, he is providing the justice system with a threatening example. Since he is now considered to have been legally convicted for exposing American war crimes, even though he has already served his sentence, this means that journalists who publish misconduct and crimes committed by the American armed forces can no longer assume that they are protected from legal repression. Anyone who wants to show the population what the powerful are doing in the name of that same population and are trying to keep quiet about runs the risk of being accused of treason, if not convicted.
Let us be clear: when a military hides something, it is usually not doing so to protect the country, but to protect its own skin. If it is hiding something, it is cruelty and misdeeds that the public should damn well be informed about, because it is their tax money, perhaps even their lives, that feeds this apparatus. So if we are unlucky, the USA has just gained a back door to silence attentive observers and researchers when they come across information for which politicians or the armed forces should be held accountable. State institutions are the only legal entities that can demand, with complete freedom, that their crimes should neither be punished nor disclosed.
This should cause us great concern, especially in view of the possible imminent second term of Donald Trump. We saw the impact that individual rulings in the USA can have on the entire constitutional state, not least through the annulment of the landmark decision in the legal dispute "Roe v. Wade", which completely overturned abortion law. If a US government, especially one led by buffoons of Trump's caliber, can now prohibit investigative journalists from telling humanity what it has a right to know by filing charges of breach of secrecy or even treason, this has an impact on freedom and transparency within a democracy that we can only partially imagine. Especially in foreign policy times as precarious as these.
Imagine if we were kept in the dark when the future of nuclear defense was being debated behind closed doors, war crimes were being planned, and corruption was being approved. Imagine if a government that depends on the favor of the voters could prohibit the press from revealing the true faces of its politicians to the electorate. Imagine what this means for a democracy that can only function if it is based on a people who become mature through information.
It is right and long overdue that Julian Assange is freed. But he should never have been convicted. He made the only possible decision for his peace of mind, his health, his life. We should never forgive the American justice system for extracting an admission of guilt from him disguised as a compromise.
07/04/24
*Bent-Erik Scholz works as a freelancer for RBB
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