Washington (AFP)

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange won a round when a British judge refused to extradite him to the United States where he is being prosecuted for espionage, but in the United States, experts believe his case remains a threat to the United States. freedom of press.

Judge Vanessa Baraitser on Monday refused the 49-year-old Australian's extradition "on mental health grounds", citing suicide risks.

But she rejected the arguments relating to the defense of the freedom of expression of Assange who faces 175 years in prison for having disseminated, from 2010, more than 700,000 classified documents on American military and diplomatic activities, especially in Iraq. and in Afghanistan.

His decision, and the determination of the American justice system to appeal, left open the question of the use in this case of the Espionage Act, a law passed in 1917 to prevent the leakage of confidential information in wartime.

A law which now threatens journalists and their work from sources, which sometimes involves the dissemination of documents classified as defense secret.

Before Assange, a handful of people, including at least one journalist, had already been charged under this law for obtaining and disseminating classified information, but the charges were systematically dropped.

For Bruce Brown, director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Ms. Baraitser's decision is "deeply troubling".

"The mere fact of publishing secret documents that the US government does not want to make public is not espionage," he said.

"The government's legal position in this matter remains dangerous for the fundamental principle of freedom of the press."

British justice "accepted the accusation of American justice, even if it rejected the extradition request of the United States", tweeted Jameel Jaffer, expert on press freedom at Columbia University.

"The result is that the shadow of Assange's indictment will continue to hang over investigative journalism."

- "Hostile intelligence service" -

The release of WikiLeaks documents in 2010 shook the US government, exposing the underside of its military operations and publishing unflattering diplomatic exchanges.

The administration of Barack Obama had considered taking Assange to justice, but had abandoned it, believing that the lawsuits could also be interpreted as a threat to the American press and therefore risked failure.

WikiLeaks lawyers have always portrayed the organization as a newspaper company, but in 2017 Donald Trump's administration rejected this argument after a new publication of compromising documents for the CIA, angering its leader Mike Pompeo (now since Secretary of State).

"It is a hostile non-state intelligence service," he said of WikiLeaks.

In 2018, a grand jury indicted Julian Assange in the utmost secrecy with criminal conspiracy to carry out "hacking", a sentence punishable by five years in prison.

A year later, the Justice Department revealed this secret indictment and extended it to 17 other charges, 16 of which relate to obtaining and disseminating classified information, announcing that it would seek extradition d'Assange to stand trial in a Virginia court specializing in espionage cases.

- "Vital role" -

"The ministry takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy but Julian Assange is not a journalist," said John Demers, head of national security issues at the justice ministry.

"No responsible journalist would knowingly publish the names of confidential sources in war zones, knowing that this would expose them to the greatest danger," he said.

Believing that Julian Assange's agreement with hacker groups to obtain documents "made him go beyond the role linked to investigative journalism", the British judge appeared to support the position of American justice .

But the American press regularly seeks access to classified information thanks to confidential sources, as Assange did, estimates Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier foundation.

"Investigative journalism - including the research, analysis and publication of government documents obtained through leaks, especially those which reveal abuse - plays a vital role in holding the United States government to account," she adds.

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