The story of Australian journalist Julian Assange, who was hounded by America for years after he released secret documents of US intelligence agencies on his website WikiLeaks
Dr. Mushtaq Soomro
It was 2014 when I left Ireland to live in the UK. One day, after showing my family the famous Harrods store, we came out of the store and found out that the famous journalist who had annoyed the powerful, like America, was living in this neighborhood of London. These were the days when not only Britain but also the other European countries were under the US pressure to hand him over to the USA. The US was making all the preparations to sentence this journalist to 70 or 80 years in prison. Then it was revealed that the CIA, reportedly, had also planned to kill him. The plan was not implemented for some reasons.
After leaving Harrods, we walked down the street to the right. There were fifteen to twenty people standing there, holding pictures and banners of this man. These people were demanding the removal of the cases and sanctions against this man. A few British police officers were also there but watching silently. This man was Mr. Julian Assange, an Australian-born journalist, editor, publisher, and computer genius who had humiliated America on his website WikiLeaks.
Comrades told me that this small flat is the Ecuadorian embassy, and Julian comes to speak from this balcony two or three times a day. We shared our thoughts about the trials being held against Julian, the American pressure, and the demonstrations being held in his support in various parts of the world. These activists also gave us pamphlets and leaflets and thanked us for supporting Mr. Assange. When it was time to say goodbye, a friend hugged me warmly. Seeing this, my younger son, Salar, was surprised and asked, “Dad, it looks like an old friend of yours?” I joked, “Yes, my son, we used to study together in school.”
Julian Assange is an Australian-born computer genius who used his skills to access sensitive information from US agencies and released it on his website WikiLeaks to let the world know that the US does not hesitate to kill innocent civilians in order to achieve its interests. In 2007, the US carried out many operations to kill innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan, the videos of which were extracted by WikiLeaks and published on its website. These videos went viral all over the world in 2010. From that day on, the US went after Julian Assange but was not able to arrest him until the end. However, Chelsea Manning, an American colleague of Julian Assange, who worked in the US Army and provided Julian with the secret material, was caught. Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. She served seven years in prison, and in 2017, Barack Obama ordered her release.
Read: Who is Wikileaks’ Julian Assange and what did he do?
Julian Assange had supporters and friends in different countries of the world who provided him with highly classified military and political information from the United States. Assange then, with great courage and boldness, published this information on his website WikiLeaks, where it was freely available for anyone to read. According to an estimate, about two million documents from US intelligence agencies were made public, including documents from the military department and the Pentagon.
There is no doubt that the USA is still the superpower that all countries in the world are more or less afraid of. At first, Julian Assange was pressured to surrender himself to America, but Mr. Assange was not such a fool that he would have either been hanged or rotted in prison for the next 70 or 80 years and died there.
Until 2010, Julian Assange was roaming around London. While under pressure from the US, the Swedish government made a false case of sexual harassment against him in 2012 and requested the British government to extradite Julian. Later, the Swedish government withdrew the case on its own. When the great power America turned against him, Julian entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London one day and requested political asylum. In those days, the Ecuadorian government did not like the US very much, so he was granted political asylum and permission to stay in the embassy.
Thus, he spent seven long years in this London apartment, a small flat, which was the Ecuadorian embassy. It was located a few minutes away from the famous luxury Harrods store, where he would go out from the balcony and greet his supporters every day. His supporters said that he might not come out for the next two or three hours, so we did not wait long, we said goodbye to our friends and went back.
There are people all over the world who oppose American policies and actions and continue to raise their voices against her excesses. The comrades I met that day outside the Ecuadorian embassy near the Harrods store became my friends within minutes. And when we said goodbye after a twenty-minute meeting, it felt like we had been close friends for decades.
Julian Assange was born in Townsville, Queensland, Australia. By the age of 16, he was known as a computer and mathematics expert. Julian Assange had been living in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years, from 2012 to 2019. For the first few years, he was allowed to meet with many dignitaries and journalists, and he always remained steadfast in his anti-imperialist stance.
One day in 2019, news suddenly broke out that the Ecuadorian embassy had called the British police and Julian had been handed over to them. It so happened that a US-friendly government came to power in the country of Ecuador, which revoked Julian’s political asylum. So, the British government sent him to Belmarsh Prison, considered the most severe prison in London, where he languished in a small cell for five years and two months. Now, let us see how several countries saved him from American wrath.
Western countries, which are considered to be in the American block, have long been looking at US policies with disdain, so they ignored US wishes and orders whenever they got the chance. In the case of Julian, it seems that from the UK to Sweden and from Sweden to Australia, they decided that no matter what the US did, Julian would not be extradited to the US, and they would drag the matter on. When these countries finally spoke to the US, seven years in confinement in the embassy and five years in a cell in London was considered enough punishment. Now, he should be given the right to be freed and return to his homeland.
It was decided that Julian would plead guilty to leaking US secrets before an American judge, and the judge would sentence him to five years in prison. Julian would argue that he had already served five years and two months in prison.
In this whole matter, it was determined that Julian would not set foot on North American soil, lest the United States fraudulently arrest him and put him in prison. So, it was arranged that he would surrender in the Mariana Islands near Australia, which is administratively an island of the United States. This would legally be considered US soil. This whole process was done so secretly that when the BBC revealed the announcement on June 24, 2024, that Julian Assange had been released from London’s Belmarsh Prison, a private plane carrying him had already crossed the British borders.
The next destination was Bangkok. The plane was refueled, and Mr. Assange was brought before a judge in the Northern Mariana Islands. To further protect him, Australia also sent its former prime minister, who himself got the job done and brought Julian to the Australian capital, Canberra, in a private plane. Julian confessed to his crime and was sentenced to five years in prison and pardoned, as he had already served five years and two months. Therefore, he was immediately released, and thus, the American power stood by and kept watching, while Julian Assange became a free citizen of Australia.
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Author is Pakistani medical doctor and freelance writer living in England. His works were published in English, Sindhi and Urdu. He can be reached at mushtaqsoomro@gmail.com
