By ERIC TUCKER Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — News that the U.S. Justice Department has reached a plea deal that will lead to freedom for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange brings a stunning culmination to a long-running saga of international intrigue that spanned multiple continents. Its central character is a quixotic internet publisher with a profound disdain for government secrets.
A look at Assange, the case and the latest developments:
WHO IS JULIAN ASSANGE?
An Australian editor and publisher, he is best known for having founded the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, which gained massive attention — and notoriety — for the 2010 release of almost half a million documents relating to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His activism made him a cause célèbre among press freedom advocates who said his work in exposing U.S. military misconduct in foreign countries made his activities indistinguishable from what traditional journalists are expected to do as part of their jobs.
But those same actions put him in the crosshairs of American prosecutors, who released an indictment in 2019 that accused Assange — holed up at the time in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London — of conspiring with an Army private to illegally obtain and publish sensitive government records.
“Julian Assange is no journalist,” John Demers, the then-top Justice Department national security official, said at the time. “No responsible actor, journalist or otherwise, would purposely publish the names of individuals he or she knew to be confidential human sources in war zones, exposing them to the gravest of dangers.”
WHAT IS ASSANGE ACCUSED OF?
The Trump administration’s Justice Department accused Assange of directing former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history.
The charges relate to WikiLeaks’ publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents, with prosecutors accusing Assange of helping Manning steal classified diplomatic cables that they say endangered national security and of conspiring together to crack a Defense Department password.
Reports from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq published by Assange included the names of Afghans and Iraqis who provided information to American and coalition forces, prosecutors said, while the diplomatic cables he released exposed journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates and dissidents in repressive countries.
Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted of violating the Espionage Act and other offenses for leaking classified government and military documents to WikiLeaks. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017, allowing her release after about seven years behind bars.
WHY WASN’T HE ALREADY IN THE CUSTODY OF THE U.S.?
Assange has spent the last five years in a British high-security prison, fighting to avoid extradition to the U.S. and winning favorable court rulings that have delayed any transfer across the Atlantic.
He was evicted in April 2019 from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had sought refuge seven years earlier amid an investigation by Swedish authorities into claims of sexual misconduct that he has long denied and that was later dropped. The South American nation revoked the political asylum following …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
