Assassins, torturers and war criminals will be toasted by British Home Secretary Priti Patel tonight. His decision to approve Julian Assange’s extradition turns investigative journalism into a criminal act and authorizes the United States to ruthlessly hunt down criminals wherever they are, bring them to justice, and punish them with maximum severity.
Julian Assange’s alleged crime was to expose the atrocities committed by the United States and its allies, mainly in Afghanistan and Iraq, during the war on terror. It shed light on the systematic abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. He revealed that more than 150 totally innocent inmates had been detained for years without even being charged.
He posted a video of helicopter gunmen laughing as they accidentally massacred unarmed Iraqi civilians in an attack that killed about 15 people, including a Reuters photographer and his assistant.
The United States refused to discipline the perpetrators of the atrocity. But they chase Assange to the ends of the earth to reveal that it took place.
Once in the hands of the United States for sure, it is almost certain that Assange will spend the rest of his life in prison. This is because the United States is determined to show that there is terrible retaliation for any journalist who publishes a story based on US government documents.
That’s why Daniel Ellsberg, the former U.S. Marine Corps officer behind revelations in the Pentagon Papers exposing the U.S. secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos, has said he feels a “great identification” with the U.S. Assange’s work.
Edward Fitzgerald, Assange’s lawyer, argued convincingly in court that Assange’s only crime is investigative journalism. For example, the U.S. prosecution alleges that it attempted to conceal “the source of the disclosure of classified records.” All worthwhile journalists would do the same, but the United States insists Assange is guilty of espionage, and the British Secretary of the Interior is ashamed of it.
While it is true that Patel is an unusually authoritarian Home Secretary, I suspect that all recent incumbents, Labor or Conservatives, have made an identical decision. Britain values beyond its security relationship with the US.
This helps to explain Patel’s judgment, but it does not make it more forgivable. Boris Johnson and his ministers love to say that they support freedom of the press. When it mattered, he was dealt a catastrophic blow.
Once carried out – it should be noted – with the silent assent of much of the big press. Too many British newspapers and broadcasters have treated the Assange case as a dirty family secret. They have not understood that the Assange hearing that led to the Patel decision is the most important case of this century involving freedom of expression.
Assange’s legal team must appeal, and we pray that they will succeed. If they do not, news coverage in Britain, and wherever the U.S. government has influence, will ultimately become a criminal activity punishable by life imprisonment in a U.S. prison.