Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00It was the shock news of overnight here in Europe.
00:05Julian Assange reaching a deal with U.S. authorities not to be extradited.
00:13He is, after transiting in Bangkok, is en route from the U.K. to the North Mariana Islands,
00:21a U.S. dependency in the Pacific, where the WikiLeaks founder is to enter a guilty plea
00:29on one count of leaking classified documents.
00:33He'll then be sentenced for time already served and will be free to return to his native Australia.
00:42In this footage released by WikiLeaks, Julian Assange is shown holding a document before
00:47boarding a plane at what it says is London's Stansted Airport.
00:52It comes as Assange reached a landmark plea deal with the United States after fighting
00:57extradition for nearly 14 years.
01:00The 52-year-old has agreed to plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to obtain
01:05and disseminate national defense information.
01:08He's not expected to face any prison time due to the five years and two months he's
01:13already served in the U.K.
01:15Assange is set to submit his plea on Wednesday in Saipan, part of the Northern Mariana Islands,
01:21a U.S. Commonwealth.
01:23He declined to travel to the U.S. mainland for proceedings, and Saipan is closer to his
01:28home country Australia, where, according to court documents, he'll return afterwards.
01:33Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese welcomed the development, though noted the
01:37proceedings were crucial and delicate.
01:40Regardless of the views that people have about Mr. Assange's activities, the case has dragged
01:46on for too long.
01:48There's nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration, and we want him brought home
01:52to Australia.
01:55Assange's legal woes began in 2010, when Wikileaks, the platform he founded, published a video
02:00of a U.S. helicopter strike in Baghdad that killed civilians and journalists, as well
02:06as incident logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
02:09He was originally charged on 18 counts of conspiring to obtain classified information,
02:15which carried a maximum penalty of 175 years in prison.
02:22And for more, we're joined by France 24's Philippe Turel.
02:26Philippe, there had been charges for 13 and a half years hanging over the head of Julian
02:33Assange, this request to be extradited.
02:37It all seemed to end kind of suddenly.
02:40It's like a coming together of the stars, I think, Francois.
02:43You've got three countries involved in this.
02:44You have the United States, which is basically the country pushing the charges that wanted
02:49Julian Assange extradited and wanted to put him in prison, 175 years in total for the
02:56crimes that he committed.
02:58Then you have Australia, which is his birth country, of which he is a national, which
03:05has been pushing for him to return home and to get him released.
03:08And then you have the United Kingdom, which is where Julian Assange happened to be at
03:12the time and where he's been serving this prison sentence for the last 1,901 days.
03:18Remember, he was also a hold up in the embassy, the Ecuadorian embassy, for years before that,
03:26from 2012 to 2019.
03:27And before that, he was remanded in custody on rape charges because he was wanted by the
03:34authorities in Sweden.
03:35So this is really the end of a very long judicial saga.
03:39And as one of the lawyers we've been talking to here at France 24 this afternoon said, this
03:44is probably the longest running extradition case in U.K. legal history.
03:50Well, for more on that, we can now cross to Sydney, Australia, where it is late into the
03:55night. Andrew Fowler, investigative reporter, the author of The Most Dangerous Man in the
04:01World, squarely about all that's happened in this saga.
04:04Thank you for being with us here on France 24.
04:08My pleasure, Francoise.
04:10Julian Assange, your first reaction when you saw that it all was suddenly coming together?
04:19Well, to say I was surprised would be an understatement.
04:23Nobody was expecting it to be this quick and nobody was expecting it to be, of all places,
04:28via the Marianas, wherever that was.
04:31We sent a scrambling for our maps to find out why he was going there and why it would
04:36all be over in one day, apparently, a one day sitting.
04:40I know that Assange was very keen not to go to the continental United States, but the
04:44question was why this offshore part of the United States?
04:48There must be some legal avenue there that makes Assange feel safer and less likely to
04:55be snatched on his way through back to Australia.
04:59What happened? What do you think made that this impasse was suddenly resolved?
05:05Well, I think a couple of things, I think the major consideration was that Joe Biden
05:10was fearing a move in from the libertarian right from the Kennedy, John F.
05:15Kennedy, Robert F.
05:16Kennedy, the libertarian who would be drawing votes away from his base.
05:22And so settling this issue was really important because Kennedy had said that he would
05:26pardon Assange if he were to be elected.
05:29Now, not much chance of him being elected, but chances of him drawing votes away from
05:33Biden, which Biden at the moment can really not want to lose.
05:38So that, I think, would be one of the major considerations.
05:42It was also a question of really at this end, the Americans are the problem with a deal
05:47that people in France will probably know about, which is the nuclear submarine deal,
05:52which in which Australia dumped France and went to America.
05:57Now, the Americans are being a little tardy in promising to deliver up the submarines
06:02they promised. So there's a bit of anti-American antipathy going on.
06:06So these things come together.
06:07And I think that's the sort of fix.
06:09But the main thing, of course, is that is that Biden was worried about losing votes to
06:14Kennedy. You've stated on the social medium formerly known as Twitter that there's
06:21still the problem of extraterritoriality, the fact that the U.S.
06:26has a long arm.
06:29Oh, absolutely.
06:30I mean, even though Julian Assange will hopefully be free and we never know until he
06:35actually steps down here on terra firma in Australia.
06:40But the question of the long reach of the American arm of the law is one that should
06:45trouble all journalists, because Assange, by doing this plea deal, if that's what
06:49happens later on today, on Wednesday, if that happens, it will mean that the Americans
06:56can reach out around the world and and arrest or arrange for the arrest of any journalist
07:01who publishes material that they claim is theirs or that that causes trouble for their
07:06national security. So it's a it's a win for Assange.
07:10I think it's a win for humanity, quite frankly, but it's a bit of a loss for investigative
07:15journalism. There's been a lot that's changed in 13 and a half years, particularly
07:21when you have these kinds of data dumps.
07:23Now, there have been lessons learned, you think?
07:29Well, I think there have been lessons learned, I think people have been scared out of
07:33their wits. I think the problem is that the the backlash against what Assange did has
07:39been so strong.
07:41I mean, we jail whistleblowers here in Australia.
07:44This hasn't happened before.
07:45I mean, what it has, but but not to the extent and not to the numbers of people that have
07:50been prosecuted or taken through the courts.
07:53And then at the last moment, the case has been withdrawn.
07:56But there's an element of fear in the public service and in the areas where investigative
08:02journalists normally draw their information from that has shut down a lot of sources.
08:06So it makes it very, very hard for people to talk to journalists and for journalists to
08:11do their work. But isn't it wasn't there an element, though, of recklessness at times if
08:15you if you just dump raw data, you do put people's lives at risk.
08:20Well, there's no suggestion that Assange dumped raw data.
08:24There's some suggestions that there were problems with the Afghan war logs.
08:28But when you when push comes to shove and you look at all the hysterical headlines about
08:32people being killed and all the nonsense that came from Hillary Clinton, you go through
08:37the detail. Nobody has been killed as a result of the WikiLeaks revelations, the so
08:43called dump. And how do we know that?
08:45Because during Chelsea Manning, formerly Bradley Manning's trial, the person that
08:50leaked documents, the Pentagon investigated this very issue, this very issue.
08:55And they came up to the conclusion that nobody had been killed at all as a result of
09:00WikiLeaks. So you can kind of lay that one to rest.
09:02And it's always raises its head.
09:04Andrew Fowler, have you been able to speak with Julian Assange in the last 24 hours?
09:10No, I haven't.
09:11But I've been tracking his plane coming through Bangkok and on his way out to the to
09:15the Marianas. And I think that tomorrow or the next day when he arrives, there'll be
09:20quite a large celebratory reception for him at Sydney Airport, if that's where he comes
09:26into. I mean, he's had to actually hire a private jet, so I read, at a cost of five
09:32hundred thousand Australian dollars to do that.
09:36So he's going to be kind of out of pocket and then we're trying to raise funds.
09:39But he'll be coming in, I would have thought, to a pretty lively and warm reception from
09:46the majority of Australian people who want him to come home.
09:49A majority of Australian people.
09:51I was going to ask you, well, what is the general sentiment in Australia, not just those
09:55who are going to the airport?
09:58General sentiment, well, according to opinion polls, about 80 percent of the Australian
10:02population want him home.
10:04And what's interesting, or what many things are interesting about this case, is that
10:10people really want him to come home.
10:13And it's not just the political left or even the political center.
10:18It's the right as well.
10:19It's libertarian right.
10:21And so you've got a cross-party and in fact a parliamentary cross-party group of people
10:26that have been campaigning strongly for Assange over the last few years.
10:31So it's not just, it's just about an Australian identity, if you like, and how
10:36Australians feel about how they've been treated by the British and by the Americans.
10:42Andrew Fallows, so many thanks for burning the midnight oil and speaking with us here
10:45at France 24 from Sydney.
10:48My pleasure, François.
10:50I want to thank as well Philip Turrell for being with us from our International Affairs
10:54Desk.