The founder of WikiLeaks was arrested on the basis of a failure to appear in court warrant issued back in 2012.
British police broke up the forced seven-year seclusion of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Thursday. In the morning, law enforcement officers entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where the 47-year-old Australian had been hiding since 2012, arrested him and took him to the police station. They acted on the basis of an invitation from the Ecuadorian authorities.
The arrest was carried out on the basis of a failure to appear in court, issued back in 2012 by the Westminster Magistrates' Court. Then the court decided to extradite Assange to Sweden, where he was awaiting trial on charges of “coercion to sexual acts and harassment,” as well as rape. However, Assange, who had previously been released on bail, chose to hide in the Ecuadorian embassy - he feared that extradition from Sweden to the United States was imminent because of his activities at WikiLeaks.
At the police station, Assange was presented with a second arrest warrant, this time from the US Department of Justice, which said it would seek its extradition. The agency clarified that the founder of WikiLeaks is charged with conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to data that was stored on computers owned by the US government.
The detention of the founder of WikiLeaks immediately became the most important world news, which was reacted in different parts of the world - from Washington to Moscow, from Berlin to Quito, in human rights organizations and the UN. The British judicial machine, which was launched in the Assange case back in 2010 and has been on standby since then, quickly came into action. Already at 14:00 (16:00 Moscow time), the founder of WikiLeaks was taken to the same Westminster Magistrates' Court and, after a short trial, was left in custody, found guilty of failing to appear in court in 2012.
This case will now be transferred to another London court - the Royal Court of Southwark, which will determine the sentence. Westminster Magistrates' Court, in turn, will hold preliminary hearings on the issue of Assange's extradition to the United States on May 2. And this process can take many months.
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British government reaction
The first to react to the arrest was the British government. Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Theresa May, speaking in Parliament, said: "No one in the UK can be outside the law."
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, in turn, urged not to glorify the Australian. “Julian Assange is not a hero and no one is above the law. For years he was hiding from the truth,”stated the head of the Foreign Office.
At the same time, many warm words were said to the Ecuadorian authorities and personally to President Lenin Moreno, who came to power in 2017, after which the clouds over Assange's head slowly but surely began to thicken.
“Thank you Ecuador and President Lenin Moreno for your cooperation with the Foreign Office to ensure that Assange is brought to justice,” the British minister said, calling the Latin American leader’s decision “very courageous”.
Why Quito got rid of Assange
Moreno himself tried to dot the i's as quickly as possible, talking about the reasons for his decision. Remarkable in this regard is the time when the President of Ecuador circulated the corresponding appeal through his social networks - at about half past five in the morning.
Moreno announced that the country's authorities took such a step because of the "aggressive and disrespectful behavior of Mr. Assange and his hostile statements against" the South American republic. At the same time, according to the head of state, Quito received guarantees from London that the founder of WikiLeaks would not be returned to the state, where he would face the death penalty.
Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Jose Valencia added that the republic's authorities also canceled the decision to grant Assange the citizenship of the country due to violations identified during its adoption.
After the government of President Lenin Moreno came to power two years ago, the republic's authorities have repeatedly stated that they are not going to expel Assange from the embassy, but they believe that his stay in the diplomatic mission building cannot be eternal. Assange's asylum situation escalated in March this year after Moreno's personal photos and telephone conversations were posted on social media. The President said that his phone and tablet, as well as the mobile devices of his family members were hacked, and the Ecuadorian authorities did not rule out that WikiLeaks and Assange could be involved in the publication of personal photos.
After the leak, Moreno claimed that Assange repeatedly violated the conditions on which he was granted asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, including by hacking and interfering in the affairs of other countries.
Washington brings charges
Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice has confirmed that it is seeking the extradition of Assange. The agency said that the founder of WikiLeaks is charged with conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to data that was stored on computers owned by the US government. These charges were brought against Assange in absentia in March 2018, but since then there has been a ban on disclosing this information. The lawsuit is filed in the federal court for the Eastern District of Virginia, where, as a rule, cases related to national security issues are tried.
According to the authorities, Assange in 2011 received several hundred thousand reports on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from former US Army private, US military intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, hundreds of dossiers on prisoners of special prisons at the US Navy base in Guantanamo, as well as reports, which were exchanged by State Department employees. Later, most of this data was published on the WikiLeaks website. Assange is accused of assisting Manning in hacking computers and persuading him to steal other data.
Information indicating that the United States, presumably, is preparing to bring charges against Assange, came to the court's base back in November 2018, but then the authorities explained this as a mistake. Many media outlets noted that Assange could face the same charges in the United States as Manning, who could face the death penalty. He was arrested in 2010 at a US military base in Kuwait and in 2013 sentenced to 35 years in prison on charges of espionage and theft of government property. During his time in prison, he announced his intention to change sex and asked to be called by the female name Chelsea, he was allowed to start hormone therapy. Manning was released in 2017 after his sentence was commuted by the 44th US President Barack Obama.
Assange is currently facing up to five years in prison on the charges brought against him. At the same time, CNN reported, citing sources, that the US authorities could bring additional charges against the founder of WikiLeaks.
U. S. officials have previously said Assange may have information about Russian-attributed interference in the 2016 U. S. elections. During the election campaign, WikiLeaks published internal correspondence of the US Democratic National Committee, which negatively affected the popularity of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. The US intelligence services claimed that the Russian Federation allegedly organized a hacker attack on the Democratic Committee for the abduction and subsequent transfer of these documents to WikiLeaks.
Russia's reaction
In Russia, commenting on Assange's arrest, they expressed the hope that his rights would be respected, promising to raise this issue at the level of international organizations. The official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Maria Zakharova said at the briefing: “We will certainly go to the platforms of international organizations with this situation. It seems to me that it is very important that specialized journalistic organizations have their say, because, indeed, the situation is unprecedented."
At the same time, the head of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs Konstantin Kosachev believes that the US position on the extradition and punishment of the founder of WikiLeaks is exclusively political in nature.
Human rights defenders criticize, but not all
It is worth noting that there was no lack of criticism of the arrest made by human rights and journalistic organizations. But we cannot say that she was unanimous.
Thus, the American Civil Liberties Union stated that this step is contrary to the constitution and creates "the preconditions for investigations against other media outlets."
The British organization "Center for Investigative Journalism" in a statement expressed deep concern over the arrest of Assange, warning that his extradition to the United States would be a blow to investigative journalism.
Amnesty International opposed his extradition to the US authorities, claiming the risk of his rights being violated in the US.
At the same time, two other influential human rights organizations - the Committee to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Watch - said they were awaiting additional information about the accusations against Assange. The press service of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in turn, informed that the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy, Joseph Cannatachi, would request permission from the British authorities to meet with Assange in order to study his statement that the Ecuadorian Embassy for they were being followed.
Pleaded not guilty
As for Assange, a few hours after his arrest, he was taken to the Westminster Magistrates' Court in London. Together with the journalists, one of the activists in a yellow vest walked into the courtroom and raised a clenched palm in support. The founder of WikiLeaks nodded his approval and held up his thumb. While waiting for the lawyer, Assange sat with a calm air and read a book based on an interview with the American writer Gore Vidal.
The Australian refused to plead guilty to breaking the law by failing to appear in 2012 before a court that released him on bail.
Assange will remain in custody
Judge Michael Snow, however, ruled differently and decided to keep Assange in custody, finding him guilty of not appearing in 2012 in court. “I think they [Assange's excuses] are unfounded,” the judge said. “His claim that he has not received a fair trial is ludicrous,” Snow added. He noted that Assange behaves like "a narcissist who cannot overstep his personal interests."
The judge referred his case to the Royal Court of Southwark. The date of consideration has not yet been determined, however, as Assange's lawyer told the TASS correspondent, his client does not face more than a year of imprisonment. “The case of Assange's violation of the bail conditions has been referred to the Royal Court, where the maximum sentence does not exceed 12 months,” he said.
Experts on British law also told a TASS correspondent that, most likely, the sentence for violating the conditions of bail is unlikely to be long and, most likely, Assange will spend in prison from several weeks to several months.
After that, the consideration of the case on his extradition to the United States should begin. It will also be held at London's Westminster Court. The judge ruled that by June 12, the United States must provide documents for extradition.
The preliminary extradition hearings will take place even earlier. Judge Snow appointed them for May 2, ordering to hear Assange via video link. As a specialist in British law emphasized in a conversation with a TASS correspondent, the extradition case can be very long. “It could be months. In addition, if the court decides to extradite him to the United States, Assange will have the opportunity to appeal this decision to the High Court of London,”said the agency's interlocutor.
The hunt for Assange
During the court session, journalists were on duty at the car entrance to the court. It was through these gates that the Australian was brought to the hearing. Dozens of videographers and photographers lined the building trying to capture the much-changed freedom of information champion. In the morning, Assange, who was forcibly dragged to a police van by several men in civilian clothes, appeared with a large white beard, with which he had not previously appeared in public.
When it became known that Assange had been taken away through another exit, the media workers began to disperse.
After the trial, supporters of the founder of WikiLeaks staged a protest outside the courthouse. Among those who came here with posters with the words "Freedom for Assange" was an employee of a London hospital, New Zealand Erza. She, like many other people who share his point of view, was on watch at the Ecuadorian embassy in the morning, but then moved to the courthouse.
“Governments all over the world should be controlled by the society, but without people like Assange, without his organization, this will not be possible. That is why he should be free,”she said.