By Marina Menéndez Quintero on June 25, 2024 from Havana
Julian Assange, heading home. photo: Wikileaks
“Julian is free,” words written excitedly yesterday on the social network X, of Stella, the lawyer and wife of Julian Assange, the Australian journalist founder of Wikileaks imprisoned in the high security prison of Belmarsh, in Great Britain. He has been there for the last five years of the total of 14 he has been imprisoned in a legal limbo; ever since November 2010, when the Stockholm Criminal Court issued an international arrest warrant against him. His release comes 1901 days after his incarceration for revealing the truth about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The crimes he is charged with have been questioned by thousands of people around the world and by defenders of a freedom of the press that “fails” when it comes to airing the truths of its promoters in the United States.
From his platform in Wikileaks, Assange published thousands of classified Pentagon military documents that revealed from the abuses and despicable tortures committed against innocent people imprisoned in the Middle East in the context of the so-called war against terrorism, to the bombings against civilians during the war against Iraq, to “unethical” conducts of the White House such as the illegal wiretapping of other governments, among them, that of the then Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
It has been revealed that despite having uncovered the truth and making a huge contribution to the world, Julian Assange must now plead guilty to some of the charges against him to prevent the perpetrators from continuing to do him injustice.
The United States was seeking his extradition, where he was to face a trial on 18 charges that would have meant up to 175 years in prison.
It has been unofficially disclosed that Assange has reached a preliminary agreement with U.S. judicial authorities to plead guilty to the charge of conspiracy to obtain and disclose U.S. national defense information, which he must do before a court in the Northern Mariana Islands, under U.S. jurisdiction, at a hearing scheduled for Wednesday June 26. After that the journalist will be released with time served and flown to Australia to be reunited with his family.
Assange is likely to be sentenced to about five years and three months of time already served, counting those he has spent in Belmarsh, where he arrived in April 2019. After that the journalist will be released and presumably flown to his native Australia to be reunited with his family.
Developments in the judicial framework have been particularly pressing for him and his defense team in recent months. In February, his lawyers went to the High Court in London in what appeared to be the last attempt to avoid extradition to the U.S. after he was refused permission to appeal on that order by a London judge in June 2023.
A breath of relief came last March when the High Court in the British capital allowed him that appeal.
A video published by RT now shows him, in images allegedly taken on Monday, boarding a plane after the High Court in London released him on bail, after which he left the UK, that source said.
Since 2010, the Australian journalist has endured an ordeal that began with false accusations of sexual abuse before the Swedish courts, the international arrest warrant, accusations by the United States under its Espionage Act, political asylum in the Embassy of Ecuador in London that protected him from injustice until his violent arrest there, when the government of Lenín Moreno capitulated and opened the doors of the diplomatic legation to the London police.
In her post on the social network X, Stella Assange repeatedly thanked “YOU, everyone who has mobilized for years and years to make this happen. THANK YOU. Thank you. THANK YOU.”
Definitions surrounding a case that flagrantly violates America’s proclaimed principles regarding freedom of the press will be known at the hearing announced for Wednesday.
Victory in the battle for Assange seems nearly certain… Even if the courageous journalist has to lie to the truth, to avoid being convicted for it.
Cuban President Celebrates the Release of Julian Assange
While joy and relief is flooding in from around the world Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel stressed that Julian Assange’s conviction will remain in the memory of the people as proof of how little his jailers believe in freedom of the press.
Díaz-Canel went on to say on X how pleased he is with the release of Assange, imprisoned for showing the world the crimes committed by the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq.
For his part, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, in a message on social network, described Assange’s release as a victory for the truth, after years of unjust imprisonment and political persecution.
According to WikiLeaks, the release of its founder is the result of a long global campaign that involved grassroots organizers, press freedom advocates, lawmakers and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations.
Marina Menéndez Quintero is an international analyst for the newspaper Juventud Rebelde. She is a regular guest of the Cuban television program Mesa Redonda and has covered electoral processes in Nicaragua and Venezuela and other parts of Latin American. She received the José Martí Journalism Award from Prensa Latina, and José Martí National Award for her Life’s Work (2023).
Source: Cubaperiodistas, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English