The legal standoff between Julian Assange and the United States began a new chapter on Wednesday, October 27, with the start of the appeal trial for his extradition.

Since the publication of a series of classified documents in 2010, including hundreds on the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, American justice is pursuing the founder of Wikileaks and now wants him to be tried and sentenced on his soil.  

The 50-year-old Australian, who faces 175 years in prison in the United States, won a first victory in January, when British judges deemed his state of health too fragile and rejected the American request.

While a second trial is being held, its defenders intend to highlight the danger that a conviction for the recovery and dissemination of classified documents poses to journalistic activity as a whole.  

Return of the "Espionage Act" 

In this trial, Julian Assange faces 18 charges in the United States, including 17 under the Espionage Act and one in the name of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This espionage law, which dates from 1917, was intended to prohibit interference with military operations or recruitment, to prevent insubordination in the military, and to prevent the support of enemies of the United States in wartime.  

Long dormant because it was deemed contrary to the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of expression, it was reactivated under the Obama presidency to prosecute and condemn whistleblowers.

While during the 20th century it had resulted in only one conviction for a case of leaking confidential documents, the Obama administration prosecuted eight people in the name of the "Espionage Act".   

In May 2019, while the American lawsuits against Julian Assange are stalling, Donald Trump decides to use this law against the founder of Wikileaks.

The latter, hitherto prosecuted for hacking, is now the subject of 17 additional charges.  

He is notably accused of having incited his source to give him the confidential documents or even to have distributed them knowing that they could be used to harm the United States.

"Can you imagine that in France we could activate a law of 1917, which is supposed to suppress spies during the First World War, against a man who disseminated information?"

is indignant the French lawyer of Julian Assange, master Antoine Vey, interviewed on France 24.  

"It is the principle of journalism to disseminate information when it is true and of general interest, whether the government likes it or not, otherwise you are no longer in a democracy" he continues, denouncing an "instrumentalisation of the rules legal for exclusively political purposes ”.  

05:41

Assange, a reporter?  

Among the feats of arms of Julian Assange, the dissemination of documents revealing the killings of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan by the American army particularly marked the spirits. The video “Collateral murders” of a war crime in Baghdad in July 12, 2007, in which an Apache helicopter opens fire, killing at least 18 people including two Reuters journalists, becomes, at the time of its broadcast, the symbol of American burrs and sparked a resounding scandal.  

These leaks of documents are then considered of extreme importance by a number of journalistic and human rights organizations. But in the United States, these revelations are under attack by politicians of all stripes, some denouncing serious violations of the law while others accuse WikiLeaks of attacking the international community. The United States notably blames Julian Assange for having endangered the security of some of its informants with the raw publication of these thousands of documents.  

These attacks on the man who demands total transparency from governments as well as the rape accusations against him in Sweden, which have since been dropped, have generated a debate on his person and his methods which, according to Reporters Without Borders secretary general Christophe Deloire, served as a smoke screen.  

“The character is certainly open to criticism in a lot of ways.

At RSF we do not defend absolute transparency and we are convinced that journalism has a role to play in the selection of information of public interest.

But there is no denying that the proceedings against Assange, and in particular the charges relating to US espionage law, pose a real risk to our work.  

"It should be understood that if this law had already been used against whistleblowers, therefore people who were held in secrecy by their hierarchy and broke the rules, Julian Assange, him, is being prosecuted for his role of broadcaster. It is not a question of defending the person or of knowing if his methods make him a real journalist, but he risks conviction for his contribution to journalism and with this trial, what is at stake is above all the freedom to the press ”.   

06:38

Detained for two and a half years in Belmarsh high security prison, east of the British capital, after his long voluntary imprisonment at the Embassy of Ecuador, Julian Assange participated in the hearing remotely, by videoconference .

Discussions will continue on Thursday.

A decision is not expected for several weeks.

The summary of the week

France 24 invites you to come back to the news that marked the week

I subscribe

Take international news everywhere with you!

Download the France 24 application

google-play-badge_FR