WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on verge of leaving diplomatic sanctuary of Ecuador Embassy in London
AMID fears of assassination, Julian Assange could shortly walk free from his five-year exile in the Ecuador Embassy in London. But will that mean his fight has only just begun?
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“Never Gonna to give you up, never gonna let you down,
Never gonna run around and desert you.
Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.”
Rick Astley, 1987
IT is not exactly a song to inspire an image of a self-proclaimed freedom fighter, but on August 16, 2012 Julian Paul Assange had few musical options available.
Two months earlier on June 19 he entered the first floor, Flat 3B, Number 3 Hans Crescent in up-market Knightsbridge in London to seek asylum that in August was granted, prompting the earworm ‘80s Astley mega hit to be played over and over in a loop outside the embassy by one of the hundreds of supporters armed with an iPhone held to a megaphone.
Few would have imagined then however, it would effectively become the mantra for the Metropolitan Police as around-the-clock they surrounded the Ecuadorean Embassy that would become Assange’s prison home for the next five and a half years.
Now the 46-year-old Australian WikiLeaks founder is on the verge of leaving his diplomatic sanctuary with England’s Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot to rule on Tuesday on the arrest warrant that has seen him effectively confined to a backroom of the small embassy.
To some he is a cyber hero, to others a terrorist but the question remains whether his flight from justice and self-imposed exile has strengthened or diminished his and Wikileaks cause to reveal the world’s secrets.
If his accidental Twitter breach this week is anything to go by, Assange and his army of hackers have a lot more to say and that is making governments nervous.
Assange has a long way to beat Hungary’s then-leader of the Catholic Church Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty, who in 1956 was granted political asylum in the United States embassy in Budapest for where he would remain for 15 years.
But the cardinal’s diplomatic quarters of the world’s then most powerful nation was never going to be as cramped as those Assange found in Ecuador’s tiny first-floor flat next door to the busy loading dock of the Harrod’s department store.
Had the Queenslander imagined he would be in a windowless backroom and having to convert a toilet into a bedroom for five years no doubt he would have researched London’s collection of embassies more thoroughly.
Assange entered the embassy in 2012, breaching his bail in the UK on a deportation demand by Sweden that wanted him for questioning over two alleged 2010 sexual assault claims.
He maintained he was never concerned with the allegations which he vehemently refuted but feared it was a move by the US Government to have him detained, with the US District Court that year ordering Google to turn over metadata related to his leaking of thousands of sensitive diplomatic and military cables which could see him jailed under the US Espionage Act for 45 years.
In November 2016 Swedish prosecutors interviewed Assange in the embassy, with potential for charges already past their statute of limitations, and six months later dropped their probe and revoked his European-wide arrest warrant. The move prompted his legal team to again appeal to Westminster Court to allow him to walk free from the embassy since the British bail arrest warrant had lost its “purpose and function” and there was no public interest in seeing him further trapped.
In response the Crown last week argued it would be “absurd” if a defendant were to be effectively “rewarded” for managing to evade proceedings for sufficiently long that existing court proceedings happened to fall away.
Regardless of what happens on Tuesday there is no doubt the stranding of Assange, who many had never heard off prior to 2012, has boosted his profile and that of WikiLeaks and attracted financial, emotional and celebrity support for their cause.
Chief among the latter, former Baywatch bombshell Pamela Anderson who has been a regular visitor to the embassy.
When News Corp Australia was granted rare access to Assange three years ago it was clear he lorded over hapless embassy staff and had managed to set up a hi-tech WikiLeaks bureau from which he could continue his activities.
Just this week he had inadvertently made contact with who he thought was conservative American talk show host Sean Hannity offering to send him information on top Democrat on the US Senate intelligence committee Senator Mark Warner related to alleged Russian interference in the 2016 Donald Trump presidential election.
The news was related to emails stolen by Kremlin-backed hackers that last year saw the CIA brand WikiLeaks a hostile intelligence actor.
It didn’t matter he inadvertently contacted a bored woman in Texas pretending to be Hannity on Twitter. The potential breach showed Assange, who now has Ecuadorean citizenship, willing to release documents about those he deems enemies of the people; he has noticeably refrained from leaking or whistleblowing anything to do with Russia.
JULIAN ASSANGE’S CONSPIRACY TOMES
When Assange made his now infamous public address from the embassy balcony in August 2012, he already looked gaunt and pale from just three months indoors. When this author was invited to visit him a year later it was clear his plight had clearly made him not only ill looking but a very odd man to put it mildly.
His scripted deluded monologue almost robotic responses and shelves choked with conspiracy tomes and Oliver Stone movies had made him more bitter and sinister than the man who in 2012 had publicly likened himself to Simon Bolivar, the Venezuelan revolutionary who rallied Latin Americans against the 19th Century Spanish Empire.
He fears he will be assassinated if he walks free but believes he is an important historical figure championing for all, that the world could not do without. Come Tuesday afternoon London time a court will decide if that’s the case.
Originally published as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on verge of leaving diplomatic sanctuary of Ecuador Embassy in London
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