The Council of Europe recognized Julian Assange as a political prisoner. international

The Council of Europe recognized Julian Assange as a political prisoner this Wednesday in a resolution approved by a simple majority in the Strasbourg-based body’s Parliamentary Assembly. In the same decision, the organization urged the United States to reform the Espionage Act for which it prosecuted the WikiLeaks founder.

The 53-year-old Australian regained the freedom he had been deprived of for more than a decade last June after reaching a judicial deal with Washington in which he accepted a five-year sentence. A sentence that the US justice system considered complete with a stay in a maximum-security British prison, as he was deported from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2019, where he was a refugee for the next seven years.

As Assange recalled in Strasbourg on Tuesday in his first public appearance since arriving in Australia as a “free man”, according to the now valid council resolution, the payment was made to convict “for the sake of doing journalism”. , which was an extreme thing. The leaks have had a “deterrent effect” on human rights and freedom of the press in Europe that goes far beyond the case of the platform leader.

“The Assembly believes that the disproportionately serious charges brought by the United States against Julian Assange under the Espionage Act expose him to the risk of conviction. In fact The sentence of life imprisonment, together with his conviction and sentence under that law for what was, in essence, the collection and publication of news, meets the criteria (…) of the definition of a political prisoner and as a political prisoner Justifies Assange’s designation. , the text of the resolution has been approved with 88 votes in favor, 13 votes against and 20 abstentions. The Council of Europe is a non-legislative international body made up of 46 states – including the 27 members of the European Union – that ensures human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

The WikiLeaks founder, who followed the debate on the resolution from the guest gallery, celebrated the approval of the text by raising his fist as usual before leaving the chamber with his lawyers and his wife, Stella Assange.

After this, he met behind closed doors – Assange has avoided any contact with the press – with former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who had come to Strasbourg to observe the vote. His government (2007–17) granted him political asylum in 2012 at its embassy in London, where the Australian had barricaded himself after a British court approved his extradition to Sweden for an alleged rape case. The Australian had always refused. Assange has linked that case to judicial harassment by the United States for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents on Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010, including a video in which American soldiers drop two Reuters agency journalists from a helicopter in Baghdad. They are seen shooting. That same year, WikiLeaks also leaked more than 200,000 US State Department diplomatic cables to several international newspapers, including EL PAÍS, the so-called cablegateWhich shook world diplomacy.

His recognition as a political prisoner by the Council of Europe is “a great step, but only the first great step to settle accounts with history,” Correa assessed in a statement to journalists. The persecution of the WikiLeaks founder “worked” for the United States, he lamented: “It’s a message that worked as a deterrent effect, so that no one else would dare to report war crimes in the United States , he has achieved it.” But at least “we are starting to reckon with history so that something like this never happens again,” said the former president, who revealed that until this Wednesday he did not know Assange personally, although it It was under their mandate that he was granted asylum, “more than that,” he said, adding that he never maintained contact during the seven years he lived in the Ecuadorian embassy.

The resolution on Assange also recognizes that the “improper use” of the Espionage Act against Assange has created a dangerous deterrent effect, discouraging editors, journalists and reporters from reporting on inappropriate government conduct, which has violated freedom of expression. has been seriously weakened. “There is scope for greater abuses by state authorities.” For this reason, Strasbourg urges the United States, an observer country, to make “urgent reforms” to the espionage law, among others, by “excluding” from its implementation “editors, journalists and whistleblowers” who seek to alert. and disclose classified information with the intent to report. Serious crimes such as murder, torture, corruption or illegal surveillance.”

It also urges Washington to “cooperate in good faith” with the Spanish justice system to “clarify all the facts of the alleged illegal surveillance of Assange and his interlocutors at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.” As EL PAÍS’s investigation revealed, Undercover Global SL, a Spanish private security company, hired to protect diplomatic heritage between 2012 and 2018, exploited cyberactivists and people visiting them, especially their Made lawyers and associates victims of espionage.