He is an Australian citizen.
He worked with a military whistleblower to uncover and publish a video from the gun sights of an American Apache helicopter in Iraq that opened fire on a group of men and then a van that stopped to help them. The driver of the van was killed and his two children were wounded.
He published revelations that exposed drone strikes, corruption and extrajudicial executions by governments across the world.
His website partnered with internationally-recognised outlets such as The New York Times, Le Monde and The Guardian.
He won a Walkley Award for “most outstanding contribution to journalism”. By this time, he was also the target of an ”unprecedented” US government criminal investigation.
His cause was clouded by a criminal investigation into allegations of sexual assault and molestation. The charges were later dropped.
He sought asylum in a foreign embassy in London. He did not leave the building for seven years. A UN working group described his situation as a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, virtually every move that the US government made against him has since been used against mainstream journalists.
He was arrested after being expelled from the embassy and charged with multiple counts of espionage and related crimes under the US Espionage Act. He is facing up to 170 years in prison.
His lawyer told the press his arrest set a “dangerous precedent for all media and journalists in Europe and around the world”. The two biggest employers of journalists in Australia responded by publishing pieces which insisted the man is “not a journalist”.
His health deteriorated. At a court hearing to try and delay his extradition to the US, he appeared querulous and confused, struggling to recall his name and age. His application was dismissed.
That same week, the Australian media united to launch a public campaign decrying attacks on journalists and whistleblowers. The name of the campaign: “Right To Know”.
He has received no assistance from his government.
Remember how a man jailed by an out of control government, falsely accused of working for the enemies of that government, came back home and told us JA is not a journalist and deserves it? I do.
I remember well Draco. That gentleman is now a Professor in the UNESCO Chair of Journalism and Communications at the University of Queensland.
So do I …The expletive 4th Estate of this country, overall, makes a fine excellent 5th column…the odd exceptions prove the facts of the rule..
Yep. It’s the first of the two articles linked to at: publishing pieces. U of Q must see something that I cannot.
Thanks Charlie for a great article. It makes a mockery of the Australian msm with their righteous Right to Know campaign and redacted front covers of their print runs. And of our government, no matter which party is in power. When I wrote to PM Gillard opposing her stance on this matter, I got a response from her A-G that contained more weasel words than could be imagined.
Mateship is dead – if it ever existed after all it rode on the back of the White Australia Policy and the sheer stupidity of Gallipoli.
Our Government is not for the people it is for naked power and greed based on fear (hence our race to WW1, Vietnam & Iraq as the most egregious examples at the behest of a Big Brothers shadow puppetry).
Worse still there are suckers out there who keep falling for it and are willing victims of our lemming race to the cliffs of a neo-Democracy that will consign us to a police state.
Whistleblowers are the true patriots but our political masters crucify them while leaking at their own leisure and convenience – some former politicians should be doing jail time for authorizing the bugging of Timor-Leste and the criminal act of stealing resources from a weaker neighbor – an act of war in my opinion. It’s the height of hypocrisy for our politicians to harass whistleblowers and I condemn all politicians who don’t stand up for them.
Missing: he helped deliver us Donald Trump thinking (foolishly) that Trump would not try to have him extradited. Would have been better helping Hillary. Now we are all paying for his stupidity. I appreciate the dilemma that Assange has placed us in, which is exquisite, but we should not forget his duplicitous selfish actions during the 2016 election.
Peter,
I was about to make exactly the same comment. I don’t have much sympathy for ‘him’ for this very reason. The fact that the Wikileaks servers were sited in Russia is suspicious in itself.
Don’t give us “suspicions”, give us LAW!
Are you saying Wikileaks should’ve refrained from publishing truthful information it received, due to the fact that it was damaging to the Clinton campaign? I am referring to the Podesta emails, that revealed the corruption of the DNC, primaries rigged in favour of Clinton etc.
Wikileaks is an organization the facilitates public interest whistleblowing. Clearly information detailing the corruption of the DNC / Clinton campaign is in the public interest. How can Wikileaks fulfill its role if it behaves in a partisan manner, only publishing information that it will help/hinder a particular political candidate/position etc.?
“He would have been better helping Hillary” – do you really think that leaks are necessary in order to show the public the nature of Donald “grab her by the p***y” Trump.?
Shiiit ..Pull n tug on your own long bow a bit harder why don’t you . .Gave us Trump ? Go complain to the American people ,.and we are all paying ..Keep your witless we to yourself …Hillary wanted him executed/assassinated .He’s got a damn good chance of ending up in a US supermax torture centre .Your weasly mealy mouthed sentiments are disgusting ..And I mean ,skin crawling disgust..
Is your argument itself so poor that you need to stoop to this sort of pejorative language? Before you feel inclined to start writing such sewage, learning to read would be a good start for you, Maxwell. I did not say he “gave us Trump” I said “he helped deliver us Trump”. The Russians thought he was a great help. So should you.
I too am with Maxwell – the choice of Hillary or Donald was a wicked one, but Clinton was and is hell bent on continuing US evil at the behest of the military industrial complex.
The election claptrap is irrelevant, that truth about US evil had to come out, and Assange is a heroic journalist for getting it done.
Greste is utterly wrong and has shot his reputation by cosying up to the MSM….he will never take as much risk or do the great work that Assange has done.
It stuns me that Barnaby is the only politician to come out in his defence, not a man I had much respect for up to this point.
I think you are utterly bamboozled by this man. During the election he was acting in great self-interest – the bolder vision went out the window. My reference to the exquisite dilemma is that as much I as despise the man for what he has done (and I used to be an admirer) a much great danger lies in the flexing of extraterritorial power by the US to make a person doing something perfectly lawful in the UK/Australia/Europe liable to punishment in the US. This is particularly so in the case of the crime of treason which at its heart requires the perpetrator to have an allegiance to the country which holds him a traitor. I suspect if those who think Assange should be elevated to the sainthood made this argument more forcefully and left Assange’s battered reputation out of it, you would do him a great service.
Those would be the same Russians who are in the process of laying a fire blanket over the Middle East?
That would be the same Russians who have just begun hosting a ‘Russia – Africa Summit’, in Sochi, involving the leaders of 43 African countries?
Now, why would all those 3rd world and developing countries be interested in dealing with those ‘orrible, ‘orrible Russians?
Might it have anything to do with the word ‘trust’?
Irony enters the debate.
Very well said, Maxwell.
When all is said and done, JA is an Australian citizen who has not been convicted of ANY crime and he should be brought home as soon as possible.
And stuff the UQ professor…JA IS A JOURNALIST whose only ‘crime’ was to tell people the truth about what disgusting world leaders we have…including our own Scum!!
Wake up to yourselves media…Your Right to Know indeed!!!!!!!!!!!
Disgraceful that our government has not uttered a single word of condemnation of his treatment nor made any representations on his behalf. His journal reported THE TRUTH which is something his detractors seem to forget.
The Democrats themselves did as much as anyone to deliver Trump.
Not only did they serve up the establishment’s unpopular “but she is female” Clinton, but that show of what they were prepared to do and did to Sanders further eroded any belief that she was any ‘different’, let alone some “answer” to what’s been bugging Uncle Sam.
Perhaps Assange was moved to some degree for revenge for what she tried to do to him – he is human, was in a position of some power, and as prone to hubris as a lot of us – but she did give her enemies, and the apathetic, plenty to work with, and plenty of reasons for not voting for her. For “not coming out” in those colleges that mattered.
Oh, so journalists shouldn’t publish the dirty secrets of politicians we prefer? Give me a break!
And, don’t you ‘pay’ a heavy price, Pete, all comfy and snuggled up, and free to express your ignorant opinions about how Trump came to get elected?
Did you know Killary is floating having another crack in 2020?
I’m sure ordinary sod Libyans, Syrians, Ukrainians, Afghanis, Hondurans, Salvadorians, Bolivians, Venezuelans, Ecuadorians, and more, will be over the moon at the prospect.
And, Sarah Ferguson and Leigh Sales, of course.
Did you know the first time Killary spoke to Bubba in months, after the Lewinsky ‘affair’, was when she rang him to tell him to bomb the living bejesus out of Yugoslavia (not sure if it was Killary who suggested Bubba employ all those Depleted Uranium munitions, but it probably doesn’t matter much to all the Yugoslavs/ Serbs coping with the ever climbing cancer rate. Like the people of Fallujah, after Mad Dog Mattis and Orstraya’s very own, Jimmy Molan, had done with them – and their offspring to come – with even bigger helpings of DU tipped munitions).
I can’t recall if Killary got in first to ‘sway’ Bubba to commit that catalogue of war crimes in ‘the former Yugoslavia, or if the Albanian Princess, Mother Freakin’ Teresa, beat her to the punch.
I’m sure Julian Assange will be moved by you being a ‘former’ supporter.
There are lots and lots of putrid skunks who claim to have been ‘supporters’.
How about tossing aside the ‘offence’ you seem so burdened by, and look real hard at the goddamn principles involved.
Aced it!
Davie: the principle is not Assange’s status as a journalist (which he’s not), or what he did (which until 2016 when self-interest got the better of him); the principle is that he should be sent to the US for something which is not a crime in the place where he did it. You may want to rant on with your rabid (and to use your language ignorant) dislike of Clinton, but if you stuck to the true reason why Assange should not be extradited you’d win a bloody sight more hearts and minds than you will by all your frothing at the mouth.
Help Trump? He did nothing of the sort, if Wikileaks exposed Hillary it was because she deserved to be exposed. It is drawing a long bow indeed to speculate that the reason behind it was to help Trump. Assange is interested in exposing any government, politician or state backed institution that deals in deception. I cannot imagine anyone that could possibly trust politicians or governments less than Assange. Why would he think siding with Trump would be to his advantage? It’s absurd and as for Russia that nonsense doesn’t require any further comment. Prior to the 2016 election, Assange was asked who he would prefer and if I recall correctly he said choosing between Clinton and Trump was like asking him to choosing between ebola and gonorrhoea. He knows it makes no difference which puppet is in charge. He has broken no law. He is a journalist and he is an Australian citizen that is currently being held unlawfully in a prison in the UK. The bloody UK. Since when could the US charge non US citizens for alleged crimes that haven’t even taken place within a US territory? The UK government is doing their bidding and unlawfully incarcerating an Aussie and of course our abysmal government has nothing to say about the matter. Their inaction is not surprising as they are completely gutless and do nothing but lie to us on a daily basis but how any Australian is not outraged by this is beyond me. The false imprisonment and torture of an Australian citizen is ongoing and the two nations responsible for this injustice are supposed to be our greatest allies. This is what we need to be talking about. Trump, Russia, what the hell are you on about? The mere suggestion that lifelong imprisonment and torture is a fair outcome for Assange because you are upset that Trump got elected is utterly offensive and probably the most ignorant statement I have had the misfortune of reading in my lifetime. You should be ashamed of yourself. Everyone should be fighting for his release. What is taking place is unprecedented and it goes against everything we are supposed to stand for. Basic human rights. Freedom of the press. Take away these things and we are no better than those we fought against so many decades ago.
The joke on our pathetic media is that the collateral murder video exposed the hilarious murder of two journalists.
All I can say is SHAME ON YOU AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT