By Davor Džalto
July 4, 2024
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.
Julian Assange is, finally, free (as much as one can be in a world dominated by capitalist logic). This is primarily the greatest news for Assange, his family, and friends. Many people around the world, interested in old-fashioned things such as freedom, democracy, and human rights, are cheering. It is, after all, a great victory against long-lasting persecution. And yet, it is bittersweet news.
Decades of heinous crimes, regime-overthrows, launching illegitimate and illegal wars, torture, etc., all under the pretext of being committed to “democracy” and “human rights,” have not been sufficient; the Empire has also had the urge to go after individuals. The Empire uses all the standard instruments that the “good old” totalitarian regimes used against dissidents: illegitimate arrests and detention, media character assassination, and torture. Physical elimination was, thankfully, avoided in the case of Assange, and it is reasonable to suppose that this was due to the constant pressure of many individuals and organizations fighting for Assange and his rights over many years.
Assange was exposed to what John Pilger calls “the Stalinist trial,” which would be unthinkable in any society with at least a basic level of understanding of democracy and human rights. “I have never known a smear campaign like it,” notes Pilger. We have witnessed to “the fabricated character assassination of a man who refused to join the club: who believed journalism was a service to the public, never to those above.” (https://asiapacificreport.nz/2020/09/08/john-pilger-the-stalinist-trial-of-julian-assange-whose-side-are-you-on/)
As Pilger points out, Assange “exposed the fraudulence of wars promoted by the media and the homicidal nature of America’s wars, the corruption of dictators, the evils of Guantanamo. He forced us in the West to look in the mirror. He exposed the official truth-tellers in the media as collaborators: those I would call Vichy journalists. None of these imposters believed Assange when he warned that his life was in danger: that the ‘sex scandal’ in Sweden was a set up and an American hellhole was the ultimate destination.”
The case of Assange and Wikileaks has removed the last figleaf pretending to hide the oppressive character of the Empire and its readiness to employ even the most horrific brutalities when it deems them to be proper. In the name of freedom, democracy, and human rights, of course. Everyone who is not hopelessly indoctrinated (or paid to think only “the right way”) can clearly see that the Empire has no credibility, that it has actively been suppressing freedom, democracy, and human rights whenever and however it finds fit. To quote Pilger again, “The extradition hearing in London this week is the final act of an Anglo-American campaign to bury Julian Assange. It is not due process. It is due revenge. The American indictment is clearly rigged, a demonstrable sham. So far, the hearings have been reminiscent of their Stalinist equivalents during the Cold War.” A “democratic” country has allowed “a malign foreign power to manipulate justice” and has engaged in a “vicious psychological torture of Julian – a form of torture, as Nils Melzer, the UN expert has pointed out, that was refined by the Nazis because it was most effective in breaking its victims.”
The face of a merciful angel turned out to be a mask hiding the demon behind it.
But, hey, there’s Putin over there! And there’s China, as well, so… we should be given a carte blanche to do whatever we want, how we want. Because we are the “free world.” If you don’t buy that story, we may need to persecute you, campaign against you, and torture you until you realize that it is so. If you’re too stubborn, and the contemporary version of the Gulag does not really work on you, we may need to kill you as well. But only for the benefit of freedom, democracy, and human rights. And, after all, for your own benefit as well, since it is wise to realise there can be no world outside the imperial sway. At least no world in which it is worth living.
Why has the Empire employed such brutality, with such commitment, over many years, against one individual? To send a message. The message is “you don’t disobey the Godfather.” All those who take seriously the ideas of freedom of speech and thought, democracy, and human rights have thus been warned that they may be exposed to similar persecution if what they do stands in the way of imperial interests.
In this sense, the Empire has made its point. Yes, it finally allowed Assange to walk away, but only after it had inflicted enormous pain and suffering on Assange and his family, forcing him to spend some of his potentially most productive years fighting for survival and sanity. He was allowed to leave prison on the condition that he plead guilty. The imperial pax has thus been preserved and symbolically reaffirmed. Comrade Stalin would be proud.
The bittersweet outcome of the Assange saga has allowed us to repeat some of the lessons from the long history of fighting against oppression and totalitarianism. Yes, all unaccountable power structures, including non-democratic governments, have a tendency to hide their secrets. As in the “good old” totalitarian systems, so in the contemporary liberal “democratic” ones: government business is not to be discussed, let alone handled by mere mortals. The mainstream media are there to sustain the official ideology and uphold the imperial pax, going after everyone who dares to challenge the official narrative. John Pilger makes valuable points in this regard as well:
“It is said that whatever happens to Julian Assange in the next three weeks will diminish if not destroy freedom of the press in the West. But which press? The Guardian? The BBC, The New York Times, the Jeff Bezos Washington Post? No, the journalists in these organisations can breathe freely. The Judases on The Guardian who flirted with Julian, exploited his landmark work, made their pile then betrayed him, have nothing to fear. They are safe because they are needed.”
Not only the media but intellectuals in the West expose the same mentality, characterized by moral corruption, cowardice, submissiveness and spinelessness, merged with greed and the quest for power (no matter how insignificant that power and influence may be). Western intellectuals who are eager to talk about the crimes of the Putin regime but who choose to remain silent about the crimes of Western governments (and the case of Assange is only one of them) expose themselves as hypocrites, worthy of disdain. Moreover, they are complicit in those crimes by siding with the propaganda industry, where silence can be as dangerous as an open participation in propaganda.
And yet, there is another important lesson to be repeated (or learned anew) from the Assange saga: there is always a chance for a positive change, for a victory, even a small one, when there is a sufficient number of committed people who are ready to work honestly and diligently, over many years, fighting the repression in the name of human freedom and dignity. What Pilger says about freedom of the press is valid for other domains as well – freedom of conscious, thought and speech, without which human dignity and a fullfiling human life are unthinkable: “Freedom of the press now rests with the honourable few: the exceptions, the dissidents on the internet who belong to no club, who are neither rich nor laden with Pulitzers, but produce fine, disobedient, moral journalism – those like Julian Assange.”
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.
Julian Assange is, finally, free (as much as one can be in a world dominated by capitalist logic). This is primarily the greatest news for Assange, his family, and friends. Many people around the world, interested in old-fashioned things such as freedom, democracy, and human rights, are cheering. It is, after all, a great victory against long-lasting persecution. And yet, it is bittersweet news.
Decades of heinous crimes, regime-overthrows, launching illegitimate and illegal wars, torture, etc., all under the pretext of being committed to “democracy” and “human rights,” have not been sufficient; the Empire has also had the urge to go after individuals. The Empire uses all the standard instruments that the “good old” totalitarian regimes used against dissidents: illegitimate arrests and detention, media character assassination, and torture. Physical elimination was, thankfully, avoided in the case of Assange, and it is reasonable to suppose that this was due to the constant pressure of many individuals and organizations fighting for Assange and his rights over many years.
Assange was exposed to what John Pilger calls “the Stalinist trial,” which would be unthinkable in any society with at least a basic level of understanding of democracy and human rights. “I have never known a smear campaign like it,” notes Pilger. We have witnessed to “the fabricated character assassination of a man who refused to join the club: who believed journalism was a service to the public, never to those above.” (https://asiapacificreport.nz/2020/09/08/john-pilger-the-stalinist-trial-of-julian-assange-whose-side-are-you-on/)
As Pilger points out, Assange “exposed the fraudulence of wars promoted by the media and the homicidal nature of America’s wars, the corruption of dictators, the evils of Guantanamo. He forced us in the West to look in the mirror. He exposed the official truth-tellers in the media as collaborators: those I would call Vichy journalists. None of these imposters believed Assange when he warned that his life was in danger: that the ‘sex scandal’ in Sweden was a set up and an American hellhole was the ultimate destination.”
The case of Assange and Wikileaks has removed the last figleaf pretending to hide the oppressive character of the Empire and its readiness to employ even the most horrific brutalities when it deems them to be proper. In the name of freedom, democracy, and human rights, of course. Everyone who is not hopelessly indoctrinated (or paid to think only “the right way”) can clearly see that the Empire has no credibility, that it has actively been suppressing freedom, democracy, and human rights whenever and however it finds fit. To quote Pilger again, “The extradition hearing in London this week is the final act of an Anglo-American campaign to bury Julian Assange. It is not due process. It is due revenge. The American indictment is clearly rigged, a demonstrable sham. So far, the hearings have been reminiscent of their Stalinist equivalents during the Cold War.” A “democratic” country has allowed “a malign foreign power to manipulate justice” and has engaged in a “vicious psychological torture of Julian – a form of torture, as Nils Melzer, the UN expert has pointed out, that was refined by the Nazis because it was most effective in breaking its victims.”
The face of a merciful angel turned out to be a mask hiding the demon behind it.
But, hey, there’s Putin over there! And there’s China, as well, so… we should be given a carte blanche to do whatever we want, how we want. Because we are the “free world.” If you don’t buy that story, we may need to persecute you, campaign against you, and torture you until you realize that it is so. If you’re too stubborn, and the contemporary version of the Gulag does not really work on you, we may need to kill you as well. But only for the benefit of freedom, democracy, and human rights. And, after all, for your own benefit as well, since it is wise to realise there can be no world outside the imperial sway. At least no world in which it is worth living.
Why has the Empire employed such brutality, with such commitment, over many years, against one individual? To send a message. The message is “you don’t disobey the Godfather.” All those who take seriously the ideas of freedom of speech and thought, democracy, and human rights have thus been warned that they may be exposed to similar persecution if what they do stands in the way of imperial interests.
In this sense, the Empire has made its point. Yes, it finally allowed Assange to walk away, but only after it had inflicted enormous pain and suffering on Assange and his family, forcing him to spend some of his potentially most productive years fighting for survival and sanity. He was allowed to leave prison on the condition that he plead guilty. The imperial pax has thus been preserved and symbolically reaffirmed. Comrade Stalin would be proud.
The bittersweet outcome of the Assange saga has allowed us to repeat some of the lessons from the long history of fighting against oppression and totalitarianism. Yes, all unaccountable power structures, including non-democratic governments, have a tendency to hide their secrets. As in the “good old” totalitarian systems, so in the contemporary liberal “democratic” ones: government business is not to be discussed, let alone handled by mere mortals. The mainstream media are there to sustain the official ideology and uphold the imperial pax, going after everyone who dares to challenge the official narrative. John Pilger makes valuable points in this regard as well:
“It is said that whatever happens to Julian Assange in the next three weeks will diminish if not destroy freedom of the press in the West. But which press? The Guardian? The BBC, The New York Times, the Jeff Bezos Washington Post? No, the journalists in these organisations can breathe freely. The Judases on The Guardian who flirted with Julian, exploited his landmark work, made their pile then betrayed him, have nothing to fear. They are safe because they are needed.”
Not only the media but intellectuals in the West expose the same mentality, characterized by moral corruption, cowardice, submissiveness and spinelessness, merged with greed and the quest for power (no matter how insignificant that power and influence may be). Western intellectuals who are eager to talk about the crimes of the Putin regime but who choose to remain silent about the crimes of Western governments (and the case of Assange is only one of them) expose themselves as hypocrites, worthy of disdain. Moreover, they are complicit in those crimes by siding with the propaganda industry, where silence can be as dangerous as an open participation in propaganda.
And yet, there is another important lesson to be repeated (or learned anew) from the Assange saga: there is always a chance for a positive change, for a victory, even a small one, when there is a sufficient number of committed people who are ready to work honestly and diligently, over many years, fighting the repression in the name of human freedom and dignity. What Pilger says about freedom of the press is valid for other domains as well – freedom of conscious, thought and speech, without which human dignity and a fullfiling human life are unthinkable: “Freedom of the press now rests with the honourable few: the exceptions, the dissidents on the internet who belong to no club, who are neither rich nor laden with Pulitzers, but produce fine, disobedient, moral journalism – those like Julian Assange.”
Julian Assange Is Finally Free, But Let’s Not Forget the War Crimes He Exposed
Contrary to US government claims, WikiLeaks’s revelations actually saved lives — and drove demand for US accountability.
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law, and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace. A member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, she is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.
Contrary to US government claims, WikiLeaks’s revelations actually saved lives — and drove demand for US accountability.
June 29, 2024
Source: Truthout
STOP THIS – by Mr. Fish
After a 14-year struggle, including five years spent in Belmarsh, a maximum-security prison in London, WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange is finally free. Under the terms of a plea deal with the U.S. Department of Justice, Assange pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain documents, writings and notes connected with the national defense under the Espionage Act. Assange was facing 175 years in prison for 18 charges in the indictment filed by the Trump administration and pursued by the Biden administration.
The Justice Department agreed to the plea bargain a little over a month after the High Court of England and Wales ruled that Assange would be allowed to appeal an extradition order. The High Court found the U.S. government didn’t provide satisfactory assurances that Assange could rely on a First Amendment defense if extradited and tried in the U.S. The Justice Department, now fearful it would lose the case, scrambled to strike a deal with Assange.
The plea agreement requires that before entering his plea, Assange must have done everything he could to either return or destroy “any such unpublished information in his possession, custody, or control, or that of WikiLeaks or any affiliate of WikiLeaks.”
As stipulated in the plea deal, Ramona Manglona, U.S. Chief Judge of the District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, sentenced Assange to 62 months with credit for the time he served in Belmarsh Prison. The U.S. sentencing guidelines say the range for this “offense” is 41-51 months, so Assange served 11 to 21 months longer than this type of case would typically garner.
Assange was prosecuted because WikiLeaks exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. In 2010, U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who had a “TOP SECRET” U.S. security clearance, furnished WikiLeaks with 700,000 documents and reports, many of which were classified “SECRET.”
These documents included the “Iraq War Logs,” 400,000 field reports documenting 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians, as well as systematic rape, torture and murder after U.S. forces transferred detainees to a notorious Iraqi torture squad.
They also contained the “Afghan War Diary,” comprising 90,000 reports that documented more civilian casualties by coalition forces than the U.S. military had reported. And they included the “Guantánamo Files” — 779 secret reports containing evidence that 150 innocent people had been held at Guantánamo Bay for years. The reports explain how the nearly 800 men and boys there had been tortured and abused, which violated the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Manning also provided WikiLeaks with the infamous 2007 “Collateral Murder” video, which depicts a U.S. Army Apache attack helicopter crew targeting and killing 12 unarmed civilians in Baghdad, including two Reuters journalists, as well as a man who came to rescue the wounded. Two children were injured in the attack. A U.S. Army tank drove over one of the bodies, severing it in two. In a conversation after the attack, one pilot said, “Look at those dead bastards,” and the other responded, “Nice.” The video reveals evidence of three violations of the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Army Field Manual.
WikiLeaks provided material for news outlets around the world to report on U.S.-led atrocities. Informing the public about the illegality of George W. Bush’s “war on terror” resulted in calls for accountability.
“10 years on, the War Logs remain the only source of information regarding many thousands of violent civilian deaths in Iraq between 2004 and 2009,” John Sloboda, co-founder of Iraq Body Count (IBC), wrote in his submitted testimony for Assange’s extradition hearing in October 2020. IBC is an independent NGO that has done the only comprehensive monitoring of credibly reported casualties in Iraq since Bush’s 2003 invasion.
“WikiLeaks cables have contributed to court findings that US drone strikes are criminal offences and that criminal proceedings should be initiated against senior US officials involved in such strikes,” Clive Stafford Smith, co-founder of Reprieve and attorney for seven Guantánamo detainees, wrote in his submitted testimony.
“They took a hero [Assange] and turned him into a criminal,” Vahid Razavi, founder of Ethics in Tech, told Common Dreams. “Meanwhile, all of the war criminals in the files exposed by WikiLeaks via Chelsea Manning are free and never faced any punishment or even their day in court.”
The Iraq War Logs
The Iraq War Logs contained extensive evidence of U.S. war crimes. Several reports of detainee abuse were supported by medical evidence. Prisoners were blindfolded, shackled and hung by their ankles or wrists. They were subjected to punching, whipping, kicking, electrocution, electric drills, and cutting off fingers or burning with acid. Six reports document the apparent deaths of detainees.
Secret U.S. Army field reports revealed that U.S. authorities refused to investigate hundreds of reports of murder, torture, rape and abuse by Iraqi soldiers and police. The coalition had a formal policy of ignoring these allegations, marking them “no investigation is necessary.”
Although U.S. and U.K. officials maintained that no official records of civilian casualties existed, the logs document 66,081 noncombatant deaths out of 109,000 fatalities from 2004-2009.
The log describes video footage of Iraqi army officers executing a prisoner in Tal Afar. It says, “The footage shows approximately 12 Iraqi army [IA] soldiers. Ten IA soldiers were talking to one another while two soldiers held the detainee. The detainee had his hands bound … The footage shows the IA soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him.”
The Afghan War Diary
The Afghan War Diary also revealed evidence of U.S. war crimes from 2004-2009. The reports describe how a secret “black” unit composed of special operations forces hunted down accused Taliban leaders for “kill or capture” without trial. Secret commando units — classified groups of Navy and Army special operatives — used a “capture/kill list,” which resulted in the killing of civilians, angering the Afghan people.
Moreover, the CIA expanded paramilitary operations in Afghanistan, carrying out ambushes, ordering airstrikes and conducting night raids. The CIA financed the Afghan spy agency, operating it like a subsidiary.
A 2007 meeting between Afghan district officials and U.S. civil affairs officers was documented in the reports. Afghan officials are quoted as saying, “The people of Afghanistan keep loosing [sic] their trust in the government because of the high amount of corrupted government officials. The general view of the Afghans is that the current government is worst [sic] than the Taliban.”
The logs recorded numerous civilian casualties from airstrikes, shootings on the road, in villages and at checkpoints; many were caught in the cross fire. The victims weren’t suicide bombers or insurgents. Several deaths were not reported to the public.
The Guantánamo Files
The Guantánamo Files say that only 220 of the 780 people held at the prison camp since 2002 were classified as “dangerous international terrorists.” Of the rest of the detainees, 380 were classified as low-level foot soldiers and 150 were considered innocent Afghan or Pakistani civilians or farmers.
Many detainees were held at Guantánamo for years based on paltry evidence or confessions extracted by torture and abuse. Among the detainees, for example, were an 89-year-old Afghan villager with senile dementia and a 14-year-old boy who was the innocent victim of a kidnapping.
The files document a system aimed more at extracting intelligence than detaining dangerous terrorists. One man was transferred to Guantánamo because he was a mullah with special knowledge of the Taliban. A taxi driver was sent to the prison camp because he had general knowledge of certain areas in Afghanistan. An Al Jazeera journalist was held at Guantánamo for six years to be interrogated about the news network.
Nearly 100 detainees were classified with depressive or psychotic disorders. Several joined hunger strikes to protest their indefinite detention or attempted suicide, the files revealed.
No One Was Harmed by WikiLeaks’s Revelations
Although the U.S. government alleged that WikiLeaks’s publication of information had caused “great harm,” they “admitted there was not a single person anywhere that they could produce that was harmed by these publications,” Assange’s attorney Barry Pollack said at a June 26 press conference in Australia.
The plea agreement says, “Some of these raw classified documents were publicly disclosed without removing or redacting all of the personally identifiable information relating to certain individuals who shared sensitive information about their own governments and activities in their countries with the U.S. government in confidence.”
The U.S. government claims that Assange endangered U.S. informants who were named in the published documents. But John Goetz, an investigative reporter who worked for Germany’s Der Spiegel, testified at the 2020 extradition hearing that Assange went to great lengths to ensure that the names of informants in Iraq and Afghanistan were redacted. Goetz said that WikiLeaks underwent a “very rigorous redaction process” and Assange repeatedly reminded his media partners to use encryption. Indeed, Goetz said, Assange tried to stop Der Freitag from publishing material that could result in the release of unredacted information.
Moreover, WikiLeaks’s revelations actually saved lives. After WikiLeaks published evidence of Iraqi torture centers established by the U.S., the Iraqi government refused then-President Barack Obama’s request to grant immunity to U.S. soldiers who committed criminal and civil offenses there. As a result, Obama had to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.
Obama took credit for ending U.S. military involvement in Iraq. But he had tried for months to extend it beyond the December 31, 2011, deadline his predecessor negotiated with the Iraqi government. Negotiations broke down when Iraq refused to grant criminal and civil immunity to U.S. troops.
What Assange’s Plea Bargain Means for Free Speech
Before she accepted Assange’s guilty plea, Judge Manglona asked him what he did to violate the law. “Working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide information that was said to be classified,” Assange said. “I believed the First Amendment protected that activity, but I accept that it was a violation of the espionage statute.” Assange then added, “The First Amendment was in contradiction with the Espionage Act, but I accept that it would be difficult to win such a case given all these circumstances.”
Even though Assange will go free, his plea deal raises concerns for First Amendment advocates in the U.S.
“The United States has now, for the first time in the more than 100-year history of the Espionage Act, obtained an Espionage Act conviction for basic journalistic acts,” David Greene, head of civil liberties at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The New York Times. “These charges should never have been brought.”
Charlie Savage, who has covered the Assange case extensively for years, warned that Assange’s plea sets a “new precedent” that “will send a threatening message to national security journalists, who may be chilled in how aggressively they do their jobs because they will see a greater risk of prosecution.” But, Savage noted, since Assange pled guilty and didn’t mount a constitutional challenge to the Espionage Act, that eliminated the risk that the U.S. Supreme Court would ultimately sanction a narrow interpretation of First Amendment press freedoms.
“WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions,” WikiLeaks said in a statement announcing the plea agreement. “As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles, and for the people’s right to know. As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.”
There is no doubt that but for the sustained activism of people around the world and the work of his superb legal team, Julian Assange would still be languishing behind bars for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
STOP THIS – by Mr. Fish
After a 14-year struggle, including five years spent in Belmarsh, a maximum-security prison in London, WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange is finally free. Under the terms of a plea deal with the U.S. Department of Justice, Assange pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain documents, writings and notes connected with the national defense under the Espionage Act. Assange was facing 175 years in prison for 18 charges in the indictment filed by the Trump administration and pursued by the Biden administration.
The Justice Department agreed to the plea bargain a little over a month after the High Court of England and Wales ruled that Assange would be allowed to appeal an extradition order. The High Court found the U.S. government didn’t provide satisfactory assurances that Assange could rely on a First Amendment defense if extradited and tried in the U.S. The Justice Department, now fearful it would lose the case, scrambled to strike a deal with Assange.
The plea agreement requires that before entering his plea, Assange must have done everything he could to either return or destroy “any such unpublished information in his possession, custody, or control, or that of WikiLeaks or any affiliate of WikiLeaks.”
As stipulated in the plea deal, Ramona Manglona, U.S. Chief Judge of the District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, sentenced Assange to 62 months with credit for the time he served in Belmarsh Prison. The U.S. sentencing guidelines say the range for this “offense” is 41-51 months, so Assange served 11 to 21 months longer than this type of case would typically garner.
Assange was prosecuted because WikiLeaks exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. In 2010, U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who had a “TOP SECRET” U.S. security clearance, furnished WikiLeaks with 700,000 documents and reports, many of which were classified “SECRET.”
These documents included the “Iraq War Logs,” 400,000 field reports documenting 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians, as well as systematic rape, torture and murder after U.S. forces transferred detainees to a notorious Iraqi torture squad.
They also contained the “Afghan War Diary,” comprising 90,000 reports that documented more civilian casualties by coalition forces than the U.S. military had reported. And they included the “Guantánamo Files” — 779 secret reports containing evidence that 150 innocent people had been held at Guantánamo Bay for years. The reports explain how the nearly 800 men and boys there had been tortured and abused, which violated the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Manning also provided WikiLeaks with the infamous 2007 “Collateral Murder” video, which depicts a U.S. Army Apache attack helicopter crew targeting and killing 12 unarmed civilians in Baghdad, including two Reuters journalists, as well as a man who came to rescue the wounded. Two children were injured in the attack. A U.S. Army tank drove over one of the bodies, severing it in two. In a conversation after the attack, one pilot said, “Look at those dead bastards,” and the other responded, “Nice.” The video reveals evidence of three violations of the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Army Field Manual.
WikiLeaks provided material for news outlets around the world to report on U.S.-led atrocities. Informing the public about the illegality of George W. Bush’s “war on terror” resulted in calls for accountability.
“10 years on, the War Logs remain the only source of information regarding many thousands of violent civilian deaths in Iraq between 2004 and 2009,” John Sloboda, co-founder of Iraq Body Count (IBC), wrote in his submitted testimony for Assange’s extradition hearing in October 2020. IBC is an independent NGO that has done the only comprehensive monitoring of credibly reported casualties in Iraq since Bush’s 2003 invasion.
“WikiLeaks cables have contributed to court findings that US drone strikes are criminal offences and that criminal proceedings should be initiated against senior US officials involved in such strikes,” Clive Stafford Smith, co-founder of Reprieve and attorney for seven Guantánamo detainees, wrote in his submitted testimony.
“They took a hero [Assange] and turned him into a criminal,” Vahid Razavi, founder of Ethics in Tech, told Common Dreams. “Meanwhile, all of the war criminals in the files exposed by WikiLeaks via Chelsea Manning are free and never faced any punishment or even their day in court.”
The Iraq War Logs
The Iraq War Logs contained extensive evidence of U.S. war crimes. Several reports of detainee abuse were supported by medical evidence. Prisoners were blindfolded, shackled and hung by their ankles or wrists. They were subjected to punching, whipping, kicking, electrocution, electric drills, and cutting off fingers or burning with acid. Six reports document the apparent deaths of detainees.
Secret U.S. Army field reports revealed that U.S. authorities refused to investigate hundreds of reports of murder, torture, rape and abuse by Iraqi soldiers and police. The coalition had a formal policy of ignoring these allegations, marking them “no investigation is necessary.”
Although U.S. and U.K. officials maintained that no official records of civilian casualties existed, the logs document 66,081 noncombatant deaths out of 109,000 fatalities from 2004-2009.
The log describes video footage of Iraqi army officers executing a prisoner in Tal Afar. It says, “The footage shows approximately 12 Iraqi army [IA] soldiers. Ten IA soldiers were talking to one another while two soldiers held the detainee. The detainee had his hands bound … The footage shows the IA soldiers moving the detainee into the street, pushing him to the ground, punching him and shooting him.”
The Afghan War Diary
The Afghan War Diary also revealed evidence of U.S. war crimes from 2004-2009. The reports describe how a secret “black” unit composed of special operations forces hunted down accused Taliban leaders for “kill or capture” without trial. Secret commando units — classified groups of Navy and Army special operatives — used a “capture/kill list,” which resulted in the killing of civilians, angering the Afghan people.
Moreover, the CIA expanded paramilitary operations in Afghanistan, carrying out ambushes, ordering airstrikes and conducting night raids. The CIA financed the Afghan spy agency, operating it like a subsidiary.
A 2007 meeting between Afghan district officials and U.S. civil affairs officers was documented in the reports. Afghan officials are quoted as saying, “The people of Afghanistan keep loosing [sic] their trust in the government because of the high amount of corrupted government officials. The general view of the Afghans is that the current government is worst [sic] than the Taliban.”
The logs recorded numerous civilian casualties from airstrikes, shootings on the road, in villages and at checkpoints; many were caught in the cross fire. The victims weren’t suicide bombers or insurgents. Several deaths were not reported to the public.
The Guantánamo Files
The Guantánamo Files say that only 220 of the 780 people held at the prison camp since 2002 were classified as “dangerous international terrorists.” Of the rest of the detainees, 380 were classified as low-level foot soldiers and 150 were considered innocent Afghan or Pakistani civilians or farmers.
Many detainees were held at Guantánamo for years based on paltry evidence or confessions extracted by torture and abuse. Among the detainees, for example, were an 89-year-old Afghan villager with senile dementia and a 14-year-old boy who was the innocent victim of a kidnapping.
The files document a system aimed more at extracting intelligence than detaining dangerous terrorists. One man was transferred to Guantánamo because he was a mullah with special knowledge of the Taliban. A taxi driver was sent to the prison camp because he had general knowledge of certain areas in Afghanistan. An Al Jazeera journalist was held at Guantánamo for six years to be interrogated about the news network.
Nearly 100 detainees were classified with depressive or psychotic disorders. Several joined hunger strikes to protest their indefinite detention or attempted suicide, the files revealed.
No One Was Harmed by WikiLeaks’s Revelations
Although the U.S. government alleged that WikiLeaks’s publication of information had caused “great harm,” they “admitted there was not a single person anywhere that they could produce that was harmed by these publications,” Assange’s attorney Barry Pollack said at a June 26 press conference in Australia.
The plea agreement says, “Some of these raw classified documents were publicly disclosed without removing or redacting all of the personally identifiable information relating to certain individuals who shared sensitive information about their own governments and activities in their countries with the U.S. government in confidence.”
The U.S. government claims that Assange endangered U.S. informants who were named in the published documents. But John Goetz, an investigative reporter who worked for Germany’s Der Spiegel, testified at the 2020 extradition hearing that Assange went to great lengths to ensure that the names of informants in Iraq and Afghanistan were redacted. Goetz said that WikiLeaks underwent a “very rigorous redaction process” and Assange repeatedly reminded his media partners to use encryption. Indeed, Goetz said, Assange tried to stop Der Freitag from publishing material that could result in the release of unredacted information.
Moreover, WikiLeaks’s revelations actually saved lives. After WikiLeaks published evidence of Iraqi torture centers established by the U.S., the Iraqi government refused then-President Barack Obama’s request to grant immunity to U.S. soldiers who committed criminal and civil offenses there. As a result, Obama had to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.
Obama took credit for ending U.S. military involvement in Iraq. But he had tried for months to extend it beyond the December 31, 2011, deadline his predecessor negotiated with the Iraqi government. Negotiations broke down when Iraq refused to grant criminal and civil immunity to U.S. troops.
What Assange’s Plea Bargain Means for Free Speech
Before she accepted Assange’s guilty plea, Judge Manglona asked him what he did to violate the law. “Working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide information that was said to be classified,” Assange said. “I believed the First Amendment protected that activity, but I accept that it was a violation of the espionage statute.” Assange then added, “The First Amendment was in contradiction with the Espionage Act, but I accept that it would be difficult to win such a case given all these circumstances.”
Even though Assange will go free, his plea deal raises concerns for First Amendment advocates in the U.S.
“The United States has now, for the first time in the more than 100-year history of the Espionage Act, obtained an Espionage Act conviction for basic journalistic acts,” David Greene, head of civil liberties at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The New York Times. “These charges should never have been brought.”
Charlie Savage, who has covered the Assange case extensively for years, warned that Assange’s plea sets a “new precedent” that “will send a threatening message to national security journalists, who may be chilled in how aggressively they do their jobs because they will see a greater risk of prosecution.” But, Savage noted, since Assange pled guilty and didn’t mount a constitutional challenge to the Espionage Act, that eliminated the risk that the U.S. Supreme Court would ultimately sanction a narrow interpretation of First Amendment press freedoms.
“WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions,” WikiLeaks said in a statement announcing the plea agreement. “As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles, and for the people’s right to know. As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.”
There is no doubt that but for the sustained activism of people around the world and the work of his superb legal team, Julian Assange would still be languishing behind bars for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes.
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
DONATE
Related PostsBasic Press Freedoms Are at Stake in the Julian Assange Case
Chip Gibbons -- February 27, 2024
US Refuses to Assure UK Judges That Assange Won’t Be Executed If He’s Extradited
Marjorie Cohn -- February 29, 2024
Julian Assange’s Basic Press Freedoms Are Still in Danger
Chip Gibbons -- March 31, 2024
“Free the Truth”: The Belmarsh Tribunal on Julian Assange & Defending Press Freedom
Amy Goodman -- January 01, 2024
Five Years At Belmarsh: A Chronicle Of Julian Assange’s Imprisonment
Kevin Gosztola -- April 12, 2024
Related PostsBasic Press Freedoms Are at Stake in the Julian Assange Case
Chip Gibbons -- February 27, 2024
US Refuses to Assure UK Judges That Assange Won’t Be Executed If He’s Extradited
Marjorie Cohn -- February 29, 2024
Julian Assange’s Basic Press Freedoms Are Still in Danger
Chip Gibbons -- March 31, 2024
“Free the Truth”: The Belmarsh Tribunal on Julian Assange & Defending Press Freedom
Amy Goodman -- January 01, 2024
Five Years At Belmarsh: A Chronicle Of Julian Assange’s Imprisonment
Kevin Gosztola -- April 12, 2024
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law, and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace. A member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, she is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.
No comments:
Post a Comment