States that commit crimes in foreign lands depend on at least passive acquiescence. This is achieved in a number of ways. One is the “othering” of the victims: the stripping away of their humanity, because if you imagined them to be people like your own children or your neighbours, their suffering and deaths would be intolerable. Another approach is to portray opponents of foreign aggression as traitors, or in league with hostile powers. And another strategy is to cover up the consequences of foreign wars, to ensure that the populace is kept intentionally unaware of the acts committed in their name.
This is what the attempted extradition of Julian Assange to the US is about. Back in 2010, the then US soldier Chelsea Manning downloaded hundreds of thousands of classified documents relating to US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, US state department cables, and inmates imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. Assange’s alleged role consists of helping Manning crack an encrypted password to gain access to the US defense department computer network.
It is Manning who is the true hero of this story: last month, she was arrested for refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks, placed in solitary confinement for four weeks, and now remains imprisoned. We must demand her freedom.
These leaks revealed some of the horrors of the post-9/11 wars. One showed a US aircrew laughing after slaughtering a dozen innocent people, including two Iraqi employees of Reuters, after dishonestly alleging to have encountered a firefight. Other files revealed how US-led forces killed hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan, their deaths otherwise airbrushed out of existence. Another cable, which exposed corruption and scandals in the court of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the western-backed then-dictator of Tunisia, helped fuel protests, which toppled him.
Assange does have a case to answer: but it is not this. It is widely circulating around the internet that the case of a Swedish woman who alleged rape has been kicked out by authorities. This is profoundly misleading: in 2017, prosecutors concluded that “at this point, all possibilities to conduct the investigation are exhausted”, that because Assange was holed up in Ecuador’s embassy, and Ecuador would not cooperate, the investigation had to be discontinued, but could be resumed if Assange “makes himself available”.
Separate allegations of sexual assault, made by a second Swedish woman, were dropped by Swedish authorities in 2015 after expiring under the statute of limitations. You cannot be a progressive if your response to someone making an accusation of rape is to dismiss her simply because you admire the man who is accused – worse, to portray a woman as a lying, Machiavellian schemer trying to bring down a great man is misogyny. If the case is resumed, Assange must answer the accusation in Sweden without the threat of extradition to the US.
(June 1, 2010)
WikiLeaks releases about 470,000 classified military documents concerning American diplomacy and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It later releases a further tranche of more than 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables.
(November 1, 2010)
A Swedish prosecutor issues a European arrest warrant for Assange over sexual assault allegations involving two Swedish women. Assange denies the claims.
(December 7, 2010)
Assange turns himself in to police in London and is placed in custody. He is later released on bail and calls the Swedish allegations a smear campaign.
(February 1, 2011)
A British judge rules that Assange can be extradited to Sweden. Assange fears Sweden will hand him over to US authorities who could prosecute him.
(June 19, 2012)
He takes refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He requests, and is later granted, political asylum.
(November 14, 2016)
Assange is questioned in a two-day interview over the allegations at the Ecuadorian embassy by Swedish authorities.
(January 19, 2017)
WikiLeaks says Assange could travel to the United States to face investigation if his rights are 'guaranteed'. It comes after one of the site's main sources of leaked documents, Chelsea Manning, is given clemency.
(May 19, 2017)
Swedish prosecutors say they have closed their seven-year sex assault investigation into Assange. British police say they would still arrest him if he leaves the embassy as he breached the terms of his bail in 2012.
(January 11, 2018)
Britain refuses Ecuador's request to accord Assange diplomatic status, which would allow him to leave the embassy without being arrested.
(February 13, 2018)
He loses a bid to have his British arrest warrant cancelled on health grounds.
(March 28, 2018)
Ecuador cuts off Assange's internet access alleging he broke an agreement on interfering in other countries' affairs.
(November 16, 2018)
US prosecutors inadvertently disclose the existence of a sealed indictment against Assange.
(April 2, 2019)
Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno says Assange has 'repeatedly violated' the conditions of his asylum at the embassy.
(April 11, 2019)
Police arrest Assange at the embassy on behalf of the US after his asylum was withdrawn. He is charged by the US with 'a federal charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified US government computer.'
(May 1, 2019)
He is jailed for 50 weeks in the UK for breaching his bail conditions back in 2012. An apology letter from Assange is read out in court, but the judge rules that he had engaged in a 'deliberate attempt to evade justice'. On the following day the US extradition proceedings were formally started.
(May 13, 2019)
Swedish prosecutors announce they are reopening an investigation into a rape allegation against Julian Assange.
(June 13, 2019)
Home secretary Sajid Javid reveals he has signed the US extradition order for Assange paving the way for it to be heard in court.
(February 24, 2020)
Assange's extradition hearing begins at Woolwich crown court in south-east London. After a week of opening arguments, the extradition case is to be adjourned until May. Further delays are caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
(September 15, 2020)
A hearing scheduled for four weeks begins at the Old Bailey with the US government making their case that Assange tried to recruit hackers to find classified government information.
(January 4, 2021)
A British judge rules that Assange cannot be extradited to the US. The US appeals against the judgment.
(December 10, 2021)
The high court overturns that decision, and rules that Assange can be extradited.
That Swedish case must be entirely disentangled from the US extradition attempt. And while opposing Assange’s rightwing libertarian politics is perfectly reasonable, it is utterly irrelevant to the basic issue here of justice. There remain elite supporters of Hillary Clinton who, unable to accept the failure of their “centrist” ideology in an age of political unrest, still look for scapegoats for the defeat of 2016, and will happily watch Assange festering in a jail in Donald Trump’s US as a consequence.
But Assange’s extradition to the US must be passionately opposed. It is notable that Obama’s administration itself concluded that to prosecute Assange for publishing documents would gravely imperil press freedom. Yes, this is a defence of journalism and media freedom. But it is also about the attempt to intimidate those who expose crimes committed by the world’s last remaining superpower. The US wishes to hide its crimes so it can continue to commit them with impunity: that’s why, last month, Trump signed an executive order to cover up civilian deaths from drones, the use of which has hugely escalated in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan.
Silence kills, because a public that is uninformed about the slaughter of innocent people by their own government will not exert pressure to stop the killing. For the sake of stopping crimes yet to be committed, this extradition – and the intentionally chilling precedent it sets – must be defeated.
• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
