Julian Assange was arrested in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on 11 April in what WikiLeaks described as an illegal termination of his political asylum in violation of international law.
Within hours, the WikiLeaks founder appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, where he pleaded not guilty to the charge of failing to surrender to an arrest warrant and skipping bail after an extradition order to Sweden in 2012. He was found guilty, and faces a prison term of up to 12 months when he is sentenced at a Crown Court at a later date.
The UK judge also said that the United States needs to produce its case for requesting Assange’s extradition from Britain by 12 June.
Following his arrest, the US Department of Justice also announced charges against him, having accused the whistleblower of conspiring with Chelsea Manning, a former US Army intelligence analyst, to “commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified US government computer”. If found guilty on hacking charges, then Assange could face up to five years in a US prison.
Assange’s arrest has prompted thousands of people to sign a petition urging the UK government not to hand the journalist over to the United States, where he is wanted for leaks of classified government data.
“The sentence is already clear: if not the death penalty then life in a supermax prison and ill treatment like Chelsea Manning. The very extradition of Julian Assange to the United States would at the same time mean the final death of freedom of the press in the West”, the petition added.
Reacting to the news of the Australian’s detention, another world-famous whistleblower, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, tweeted that it was a “dark moment for press freedom”.
Journalist and The Intercept founder Glenn Greenwald, for his part, went on a full-blown rampage against fellow reporters who did not denounce Assange’s arrest. He also slammed those who were silent after the DoJ announced its hacking accusations against the WikiLeaks founder for allegedly helping Manning hack into a Department of Defence computer.
Assange, who rose to international prominence after leaking a trove of classified documents on US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and State Department cables, found asylum in the Ecuadorian diplomatic premises in 2012 when he tried to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he was under investigation in a sexual assault case.
The Australian journalist has denied the rape allegations, calling them politically motivated because they followed the leak of US docs. Even though Sweden later dropped the case, British police said they intended to detain Assange as soon as he left the embassy, for violating the conditions of his bail.