Successful prosecution of Assange would be ‘clear threat’ to press freedom, nat’l security reporters

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should face espionage charges in the United States because he put innocent lives at risk and went beyond journalism in his bid to solicit, steal and indiscriminately publish classified U.S. government documents, lawyers for the American government argued Wednesday. The lawyers spoke before Britain’s High Court in response to a last-ditch bid by Assange’s defense to stop his extradition from the United Kingdom to the U.S. Assange’s lawyers are asking the High Court to grant him a new appeal — his last legal roll of the dice in the long-running legal saga that has kept him in a British high-security prison for the past five years. The 52-year-old Australian has been indicted on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse over his website’s publication of a huge trove of classified U.S. documents almost 15 years ago. American prosecutors allege Assange encouraged and helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk. Lawyer Clair Dobbin told the High Court on Wednesday that Assange damaged U.S. security and intelligence services and “created a grave and imminent risk” by releasing the hundreds of thousands of documents — risks that could harm and lead to the arbitrary detention of innocent people, many of whom lived in war zones or under repressive regimes. Dobbin added that in encouraging Manning and others to hack into government computers and steal from them, Assange was “going a very considerable way beyond” a journalist gathering information. Assange was “not someone who has just set up an online box to which people can provide classified information,” she said. “The allegations are that he sought to encourage theft and hacking that would benefit WikiLeaks.” Assange’s supporters maintain he is a secrecy-busting journalist who exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have long argued that the prosecution is politically motivated and he won’t get a fair trial in the U.S. Assange’s lawyers argued on the first day of the hearing on Tuesday that American authorities are seeking to punish Assange for WikiLeaks’ “exposure of criminality on the part of the U.S. government on an unprecedented scale,” including torture and killings. Lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said Assange may “suffer a flagrant denial of justice” if he is sent to the U.S. For in-depth analysis and a deeper perspective on decade-long battle of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to avoid extradition to the United States to face spying charges, FRANCE 24’s Nadia Massih is joined by Carrie DeCell, Senior Staff Attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute and Lecturer at Columbia Law School.