My TPI.it interview in English

Printed earlier this week in Italian

Assange's fate seems to be decided, what are the chances of him still being saved?

That's not how I see it. The case is finally shown for what it is: a political persecution of a publisher because of his journalistic work. For years, the United States concealed the true nature of the persecution, but that ended when Julian was brutally removed from the embassy where he had political asylum. Ecuador had granted him political asylum from precisely the scenario that we now face. For years, all sorts of administrative excuses were used by the governments involved to justify the hounding of Julian, but even the independent observer can by now give you an accurate observation that Julian's treatment is cruel and unusual. He has spent three years in a high security prison in the UK, he is not serving any sentence, he is not charged with anything in the UK, he is being held indefinitly on behalf of a foreign country that is bringing an outrageous, politically motivated prosecution against him for his work as a publisher. Only the naive or the complicit now deny the obvious, that this is a political persecution of the most heinous kind.

Assange's defense has already announced that it will file an appeal within the deadline, which is May 18, what can happen?

Now we have an extradition order by the UK court. It is important to note that the UK-US extradition treaty is heavily tilted in favour of the United States. There is no prima facie evidence requirement, so the claims by the US government are taken at face value and they cannot be cross examined in the extradition process itself.

Julian's fate will be decided within a matter of months. The UK Home Secretary must decide whether to sign off on the court's extradition order. You will remember that the lower court actually blocked the extradition on the basis of section 91 of the Extradition Act, "oppression", that to extradite Julian would be so oppressive that it would drive him to take his own life. After the United States lost the initial round there was a political intervention by the US government in the form of a written communication to the UK government. Amnesty International looked into the content of the letter and stated that it  was "inherently unreliable". That avenue of appeal is now closed, except for the European Court of Human Rights.

The defence will submit its arguments to the Home Secretary Priti Patel by the 18th of May, and the Home Secretary will then decide whether to sign the order. If she does, we still have the opportunity to bring an appeal before the English High Court, and eventually, potentially, the UK Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights. We are talking months, not years, until a final outcome.

The most likely scenario is that the UK will greenlight this extradition and that Julian's fate will ultimately be decided in the European Court of Human Rights. This is crucial, because it means that the case will become part of the ECHR jurisprudence, including fundamental questions about the scope and strength of press freedom protections throughout the Council of Europe area, which of course includes Italy. It raises fundamental questions about exposure to conditions of torture that he will face in US custody, the political motivation of this prosecution, which was initiated under the Trump administration, and ultimately whether the ECtHR is robust enough to stop an extradition of a journalist to the country that conspired to murder him (https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/sep/27/senior-cia-officials-trump-discussed-assassinating-julian-assange).

The repurcussions for journalists and dissidents within Europe cannot be emphasised enough. This is why Julian's case is not something that is happening "over there" between the UK and the US, it is literally shaping our reality as Europeans, and the future of our rights and liberties, press freedom of course being a fundamental one. It defines a new paradigm for press freedom and the rest of Europe. Europe is our last hope, but it is also our best hope.

How are you experiencing this situation as a family?

It is extremely difficult. The time we have together as a family, usually once a week, we try to make as normal as possible within the circumstances. We have just over an hour in which the children can sit on Julian's lap, he can read them stories. I can hug him hello and goodbye and I can hold his hand across a table. We can eat some snacks from the Samaritans shop in the visitors hall. The visitors hall is very large, it holds approximately 100 people at a time, including prisoners, their visitors and the prison guards. It is loud and chaotic, but it is very cherished because it is all we have. The children love going to see their father and we make it as positive as possible. But of course there is the other side to it, which is that I don't know how long our children will have their father for, whether it is a matter of months, even in this extremely limited way. Once he is sent to the United States, if he is finally extradited, we will lose him forever.

What is the value of freedom of the press today?

A democracy is only as strong as its press is free. And press freedom is not measured by the wording of the law but the vibrancy and willingness of the press to publish inconvenient truths without fear of repercussions.  This explains why the Obama administration concluded is would not prosecute Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. To do so would be to dismantle press freedoms in the United States that had defined the open and adversarial nature of public debate in the United States. But when Donald Trump came in he waged a war against the press. CIA director Mike Pompeo drove a wide-ranging operation to silence Julian and WikiLeaks because Julian was a critic and because WikiLeaks published documents that implicated the United States in illicit and outright illegal activities. The authoritarian tendencies of the Trump administration made it possible to depart from the earlier administration and put press freedom in the cross hairs. The Trump administration did exactly what Obama said he was unwilling to do, which is to prosecute Julian for journalistic activities. Every aspect of democracy in its true sense depends on press protections being robust but also a public that maintains the expectation that those press protections will be maintained. The imprisonment of Julian has had a chilling effect all over the world. 'If they did that to Julian Assange, who is very high profile, they can go after anyone.' That is exactly the message the US government wants to send out. And of course, authoritarian governments everywhere love this scenario. Not only does it allow them to point out Western hypocrisy, it also licenses them to persecute journalists at home without the US or Europe being able to take the moral high ground. The losers are the rest of us. The public, journalists, regime critics. It is a terrible outcome.

Does the decision of the English court seem to you to be a free decision or does it show submission to America?

The submission to America is baked into the UK-US extradition treaty, which is widely criticised in the UK, even by the Prime Minister Boris Johnson for being lopsided and favourable to the United States. It was adopted in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks. The disparity is so stark that the US refused the extradition of CIA agent Anne Sacoolas, who killed a British teenager in a road accident and who the UK wants to put on trial. By allowing the US extradition request for Julian's extradition to proceed, the UK is even acting in breach of Article 4 of the US-UK extradition treaty, which prohibits extradition for political offences. Julian is charged under the Espionage Act, and espionage, of course, is a pure political offence. And then there is the fact that the British courts reversed their decision to block Julian's extradition on humanitarian grounds on the basis of a political intervention by the United States. Amnesty international called the decision "a travesty of justice".

Does Julian Assange think he made any mistake?

It would be wrong for me to put words in Julian's mouth, but I can speak about how I see things. Julian is the most principled man I know. When faced with a decision, I know him always to take the decision on principle, even when that has predictable detrimental consequences for him personally. His strong sense of right and wrong and of acting consequently is unusual, I admire it, but I also know that it has come at an enormous cost to him. It is also fair to say that Julian has been faced with many difficult choices, where there was no obvious answer, but he has always been true to his ideals, ideals which he has clearly stated in WikiLeaks mission, and he has always protected his sources. There has been a lot of false reporting about Julian, and that has been part of the perception war waged against him, including instigated by the CIA, especially under the directorship of Mike Pompeo.

The Assange story clearly shows the intrinsically undemocratic nature of power. What can civil society do?

Civil society is losing power, and many other forces, not just the old ones but new players too, are gaining power. Civil society has been unsuccessful in hitting the reset button after losing rights and is increasingly disenfranchised. We have a public square, social media platforms, that are owned and mediated by third parties. Individuals have no privacy. Our private lives and preferences have been turned into commodities for third parties to buy and sell. When the public square is private, public opinion is prone to private manipulation.

This is why Julian's case is so important to understand, not just because of the repercussions but because it is indicative of the true state of the health of our democracy. WikiLeaks is a publisher that specialises in publishing official documents about countries' conduct in war, including illegal practices such as torture, rendition, black sites, the killing of civilians, but also illegal surveillance practices, and so on. It has never published a false document, and it is a repository of contemporary history. By doing this, this small publisher so enraged the superpower whose illegal activity was exposed the most, that the superpower decided to go after the publisher with all its might. The superpower has gone after the publisher for making true information, supplied by a journalistic source Chelsea Manning, available to the public.  That information is incriminating to the superpower, because it documents its involvement in illegal killings and cover ups, exposes the interference in foreign countries judicial processes, such as in Italy. If we are agreed that war crimes are wrong and should always be exposed, no matter who the perpetrators are, then this extradition for the man who made war crimes public cannot be allowed to go ahead.

How do you judge journalism in Italy?

It is a landscape I cannot properly judge. There are excellent journalists in Italy. I perceive that there is now a lot of interest and growing awareness about the devastating implications of Julian's case due to the excellent work of those journalists. I was in the book fair in Turin earlier this year, and the international journalism festival in Perugia, and I have felt a lot of warmth, concern and engagement in both events. Last year RAI did an excellent documentary which is available on youtube. And Stefania Maurizi has done extraordinary work when no UK journalist was doing it, and has uncovered the conduct of UK and Swedish authorities which she has written about in her book, The Secret Power. I hope the awareness continues to grow because Italy and its population is a key country in the European Union, both politically and culturally.

Is there freedom in our country?

With the war in Ukraine possibly spiralling out of control in the coming months, the situation is extremely dangerous and unpredictable. War always has a serious impact on civil liberties and freedom of expression. Our starting point is suboptimal given the normalisation of restrictions of freedoms on public health grounds for the past two years. The overall trend is that we are losing our freedoms, there is greater control over information, and with Julian's case, the criminalisation of journalistic activity and consequently the public's right to know what is being done in their name. These are not independent processes, they are mutually reinforcing. The prosecution of Julian sets judicial precedent, meaning other journalists will be exposed to the same type of prosecution if this is allowed to go ahead. There is also a new political standard, whereby imprisoning journalists publishing from Europe is the new normal. How else could one interpret Julian's indefinite imprisonment after three years?

Has the US government put pressure on Western journalists to stop talking about the Assange case?

When I speak to journalists individually they are privately very sympathetic. It is hard to find a single journalist who agrees with the US's actions, and where they are silent they are typically ignorant of the details of the case. The US case against Julian is entirely indefensible, which is why every major press freedom group and human rights/civil liberties organisation is opposed to this extradition. Amnesty was in Perugia and ran a straw poll asking journalists whether or not they consider the prosecution of Julian a threat to press freedom. 100% of the 250 or so journalists answered in the affirmative. What is needed to my mind is a stronger position from media management. The New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as The Guardian, have done this. They are opposed to this prosecution and have called for the case to be dropped. Newsrooms in Italy should do the same. Perhaps they have not themselves looked into the implication of this case for their own institutions, and if they did, I would imagine they would side with the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Some journalists think that discussing whether Julian is a "journalist" or not is relevant to the case. That is misguided. The United States does not legally distinguish between journalists and non-journalists, and as far as Julian's journalism union (MEAA) which he has been a member of for over a decade, and the International Federation of Journalists, he is an accredited journalist, and he has also won dozens of journalism prizes, including the Australian version of the Pulitzer. So that discussion is always a red herring, but some people still engage in it, even though it entirely misses the point.

The fact is that since the US unveiled the actual charges against Julian the outcry has been unanimous from all the subject experts (CPJ, Amnesty, HRW, etc.): this prosecution criminalises journalistic activity, it aims to blow a fatal hole through long standing press protections. If this prosecution goes ahead it exposes every journalist to prosecution, it renders press freedom protections worthless and is a paradigm shift that cripples press freedom everywhere. Julian is not a US citizen. He owes no allegiance to the United States. He was publishing from Europe. The documents he published contained evidence of crimes of the worst kind, including war crimes. There is no question that this information was in the public interest. And he is facing 175 year sentence for doing his job. He is literally accused of receiving, possessing and communicating (to the public and to other journalists) true information, which is what journalists do every day.

This is not just a question about whether the United States will go after Italian journalists in the same way, but whether Turkey, Saudi Arabia, or any other country will apply the same principle. Anyone can issue an extradition warrant against an Italian journalist when they are in a third country. If you can apply your censorship and secrecy laws extraterritorially, what's to stop China, Russia or anywhere else from taking this as standard? It is a race to the bottom.

Julian Assange risks harsh prison conditions alongside terrible criminals, how is he experiencing all this?

Julian is fighting for his life. No one can understand what he is going through. This is a real test for the UK courts, but also for Europe to show what its values really are when the chips are down. Europeans have a lot to lose if Julian is extradited.

Has there been any foreign government that has shown that they want to take Assange's case to heart?

The country that should be intervening on Julian's behalf is Australia, but Australia is a member of the Five Eyes and its conduct in recent years has demonstrated that it will not stand up for its citizen. It will stand up for drug traffickers but not for a journalist if that journalist embarrassed its closest ally. Europe is different. There is strong support from a range of parties, for example in France and Germany, because Julian's case is beyond left and right, it goes to the heart of what it means to live in a democratic society. Perhaps what is needed now is a proper understanding about why this is a European case, not only because the case will soon reach the European Court of Human Rights, but also because Wikileaks publishes from France, WikiLeaks journalists include European citizens who are in Europe and who are at risk too. And there is a range of countries who are awaiting the outcome of this case to use it as a model to go after journalists and critics they dislike. This is a travesty that must be stopped.

What would you like to tell our Ministry of Foreign Affairs with regards to Julian's case?

Julian has rendered a service to the public, from which Italy and the European institutions have benefitted, including details about illegal targeting of senior Italian government officials, diplomats, and EU institutions and officials. Julian is being politically persecuted because of his work, which is journalistic in nature and which has been celebrated and awarded through dozens of journalism prizes. Julian must be protected, and given his native Australia's unwillingness to protect him, Europe must step in to do so because it will ultimately be decided in European courts. European countries must throw their weight behind fundamental freedoms because politics must never trump basic human rights and humanitarian principles.

Originally published in Italian:

https://www.tpi.it/esteri/destino-julian-assange-democrazia-parla-moglie-stella-20220429894610/