WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned to his homeland Australia aboard a charter jet on Wednesday, hours after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concludes a drawn-out legal saga.
The criminal case of international intrigue, which had played out for years, came to a surprise end in a most unusual setting with Assange, 52, entering his plea in a U.S. district court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands. The American commonwealth in the Pacific is relatively close to Assange’s native Australia and accommodated his desire to avoid entering the continental United States.
Assange was accused of receiving and publishing hundreds of thousands of war logs and diplomatic cables that included details of U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. His activities drew an outpouring of support from press freedom advocates, who heralded his role in bringing to light military conduct that might otherwise have been concealed from view and warned of a chilling effect on journalists. Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.
Assange raised his right fist as he emerged for the plane and his supporters at the Canberra airport cheered from a distance. Dressed in the same suit and tie he wore during his earlier court appearance, he embraced his wife Stella Assange and father John Shipton who were waiting on the tarmac.
Dude got off easy lol. He should spend the rest of his days counting his lucky stars or whatever god he believes in.
12 years in prison is more than you get for killing a child while drunk driving
The man embarrassed the US by leaking their DMs.
It’s a bit more than embarrassment. Some of what he exposed was absolutely horrific. Other leaks directly compromised confidential war and spy intelligence that directly led to the execution of informants. There had to be consequences for the latter. Had he responsibly redacted names, as a journalist should, I may have had a different opinion.
The intelligence leaks were via media outlets that didn’t sanitize the publications. It was up to them to do what was needed on that front. And in the end, nobody has shown that those failures to censor information had anything like the consequences to intelligence assets that Libby/Cheney’s leaks had.
it was a deliberate understatement for comic effect.
Still, though, 12 years is only considered proportionate because the the government sets the law and the government was embarrassed.
Its not a complete defence of Assange, his behaviors, his sketchy connections to Russia - but it is me saying that whistle-blowers are disproportionately punished not because it’s in the public interest
The man embarrassed the US by leaking their DMs.
When you do that to a nation about their classified intel, it’s called espionage. It’s a biiiit more serious than a social media hack.
In practical terms, espionage can affect thousands of lives directly and change the course of a war. Imagined the shitshow if someone released that kind of info now. It could jeopardize the Ukraine conflict. It’s treated as more serious than murder because it can be.
I probably should know better than to argue with a random stranger on the Internet but I’ll bite… Why do you think he got off easy if he spend 7 years in the Ecuadorian embassy and 5 years in an UK prison, when his sentence is 5 years?
According to the Espionage Act of 1917, he could be sentenced to life imprisonment or executed.
The US justice system is rarely that strict. For example, Donlad Trump could get sentenced to decades in prison, but likely won’t spend anytime in jail.
he’s a journalist. he got one of the hardest deals any journalist has gotten.
A real journalist would have redacted the names of Afghani informants so they wouldn’t run the risk of being killed by the Taliban
that doesn’t make him not a real journalist. sloppy, unprofessional, maybe, but he’s still a real journalist.
Journalists do not pick sides. He had email from the RNC and DNC via Russian government sponsored hacks. He chose to release only DNC emails to the benefit of pro Putin candidate Trump.
Edit word
Edit edit: can’t find any info on RNC hacks parallel to the DNC ones
Could you explain why Russia would give him the RNC emails if they didn’t want them published? I’ve seen this claim go unchallenged many times.
Journalists do and can pick sides. If you only ever report the opinion of the ruling party you’re a spokesperson and no journalist.
The “sides” may be political, moral or ideological. You’re still a journalist.
If this were not the case, Fox News world have been shuttered long ago.
Russia hacked the RNC, not Wikileaks
