Front Burner - U.S. espionage trial looms for Julian Assange

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

In 2010, Julian Assange uploaded hundreds of thousands of U.S. intelligence documents to WikiLeaks, the website he co-founded. Twelve years, an array of allegations in the U.S. and Sweden, and an extended stay at the Ecuadorian embassy in London later, a British judge has now approved his extradition to the U.S. to face spying charges. The order has been sent to the U.K. home secretary for final approval. Today, The Guardian reporter Ben Quinn joins us to explain how British courts arrived at this order, what recourse remains for Assange, and the chilling precedent his supporters fear an extradition could set.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. If you've been following the trials and tribulations of Julian Assange, you know it's been a wild ride. Twelve years ago, the whistleblower uploaded hundreds of thousands of U.S. intelligence documents to WikiLeaks, the website that he co-founded. Among those releases was a video captured by the U.S. Apache helicopter Crazy Horse 1-8 as it flew over Iraq in July 2007. Eleven civilians were killed in the assault that followed, including Reuters

journalists. That's the video that put Assange on the map and in the sights of U.S. intel. Officials there have been wanting to prosecute him for years. In fact, his legal team has been fighting to avoid a U.S. extradition for over a decade. Now this week, a development. On Wednesday, a British judge formally approved his extradition to the United States. Today, I'm going to be talking to Ben Quinn, a reporter with The Guardian based in London, England, about what happened in British courts, what happens next, and what kind of precedent this could set. Hey, Ben, it's great to have you with us. Hi, Jamie. Nice to be with you. Before we get into the latest court ruling, I wonder if we can just back up a bit here.

And I wonder if you could just tell me who is Julian Assange and what is WikiLeaks? Well, Julian Assange, he's a fascinating character. He divides opinion. To some people, he's a genius. To others, he's quite mercurial. But basically, he's an Australian who, from a very, very young age, showed a natural aptitude with computers. And in 2006, he co-founded Wikileaks,

which became a platform for the leaking and safe receipt from leakers and those worried about the public interest to actually leak information about the public interest to actually leak information into the public domain. So we use this state-of-the-art encryption to bounce stuff around the internet to hide trails, pass it through legal jurisdictions like Sweden and Belgium to take to enact those legal protections, vet it like a regular news organization, format it which is something sometimes something that's quite hard to do when you're talking about giant databases of information.

Release it to the public and then defend ourselves against the inevitable legal and political attacks. At a very early stage, I remember, 2009, an almost complete list of members of a far-right British political party, the British National Party. That might have been a key moment in the beginning of that party's demise. But they really exploded onto the public consciousness some years later when, I think you could say April 2010, the video you referred to at the outset of our conversation, showing the killing of civilians in Baghdad.

And in the same year, in July 2010, and later that year, US records and logs concerning the conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, they were also published by Wikileaks, which showed how the US military had, in some cases, killed many civilians in unreported incidents. They had disregarded warnings that Iraqis were being tortured in custody. That's really the background to who he is. It's the background to what Wikileaks is. And releasing this caused widespread outrage. What was the key element of this that actually caused the outrage, do you think? I don't know.

I guess people can see the gross disparity in force. You have guys walking in a relaxed way down the street and then a Apache helicopter sitting up at one kilometre firing 30mm cannon shells on everyone looking for any excuse to do so. And I just I just want to go over here what he's actually charged with in the United States. What what does the U.S. accuse him of doing? So at the root of the U.S. case, what U.S. prosecutors say is that Assange helped Chelsea Manning, who was a U.S. defense analyst who was subsequently imprisoned as well. The accusation is that Assange helped Manning breach the U.S. Espionage Act and that he was complicit in hacking by others and that they published classified information which which endangered informants

which endangered um u.s and other informants on that point um you know weak leaks make various points uh you know in the past they've said that they had they had attempted to uh communicate with the u.s authorities and uh work to essentially um ensure that redactions were done so lives would not be put at risk. And they would also say that strenuous efforts were made to ensure that those lives were safeguarded and informants were not compromised. Assange also, I should say, he denies plotting with Manning to crack an encrypted password on US computers.

And he says there's no evidence that anyone's safety was compromised. And he's been in jail in the United Kingdom, in London, right, for a couple of years now, since 2019. And how did he end up in jail? His time in jail arises from after a period of time which he spent inside the embassy of Ecuador. It's a complicated picture. Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy after Swedish authorities had initiated an investigation into rape allegations against him. He spent many years in that embassy. It's an embassy in central London, just around the corner from Harrods department store. It sort of became a bit of a circus for

a period of time in terms of the media, as well as a sort of a rallying point for his supporters and others. While he was in the embassy, his supporters and many others had been warning that ultimately any attempt to extradite him to Sweden would result in an onward extradition to the U.S. Now, he emerged from the embassy or rather he was hauled out of the embassy by British police eventually when after to some extent falling out with his Ecuadorian hosts and a change of the guard in Ecuador, those who are in power, his asylum status was withdrawn. He was allegedly kicked out of the Ecuadorian embassy because he was defecating everywhere and creating messes. No, that's a smear campaign. That's not true. There was video. British police have arrested the founder of the WikiLeaks website, Julian Assange, and removed him from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The Metropolitan Police say they

were invited into the embassy after its government withdrew his asylum status. And he was jailed for breaching bail conditions, essentially, arising from an earlier court appearance concerning the Swedish request for him. appearance concerning the Swedish request for him. Because he's been deemed a flight risk, essentially he has remained in jail here in the UK since then. And as we speak, he still is in a maximum security prison in Southeast London, while this lengthy legal to and fro has worked its way through the British courts over recent years. You mentioned this to and fro that's been happening in the UK courts over the last couple

of years. And I just, I wonder if you can take me through that a little bit. Like, basically, how did we get to Wednesday's ruling? Well, I suppose you could say it kicked off in terms of the main legal battle in the court, which is known as Willich Court, which is attached to the prison where he's being held. Over the period of, I think, about two weeks, Assange would come from the prison next door into this court and pass then on to later hearings in upper courts as well in central London. But you could view the court developments along the lines of this. A district judge in London heard these substantive arguments from the US for why he should be extradited. And then they heard arguments from the Assange side, which ranged over a number of areas. They included

the arguments that he essentially, he's a journalist, he was acting in the public interest, he was revealing potential war crimes here. And they also made a very, very strong case that were he to be extradited to the US, his life would be at risk on account of the types of conditions which he would be held in. And detail was also provided about Assange's mental health and his health in general, which rendered him as very vulnerable. After hearing these arguments, the district judge disagreed with Assange's lawyers on many or most of the arguments they had made but she ruled out extradition to the US on the basis that it could endanger his life after that we had a challenge

by the US side and we had what was a an unprecedented move of sorts by the US to provide a number of assurances to try and neutralise those concerns and those assurances were that, well they included that his prison conditions would be not as extreme as had been feared that he could serve the duration of his prison sentence in his native Australia and some other assurances, a package of assurances essentially that was enough to assuage the concerns of the British courts. It was the US won the day.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. I wanted to ask you about a Yahoo News story that was published a little while ago.

It was quite explosive. that was published a little while ago. It was quite explosive. And it looked at how the Trump administration was discussing kidnapping and even assassinating Assange. That's one of the explosive findings in a new expose by Yahoo News. The report details how the CIA considered abducting and possibly murdering

Assange while he took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid being extradited to Sweden. More than 30 former officials described how then CIA Director Mike Pompeo was apparently motivated to get even with WikiLeaks following its publication of sensitive CIA hacking tools called Vault 7, which the agency... And can you tell me a little bit about that? And did it play into these hearings at all? Yeah, so that was a Yahoo News investigation, I believe, and they had spoke to senior sources in the Trump administration.

And it appeared to paint a picture where the Trump administration, or rather those in the Trump administration, had discussed targeting Assange. Those types of accusations, those types of concerns did come up during the hearings in a different form. So we heard evidence that Stella Morris, who has recently become Assange's wife, we'd heard evidence about how she was stopped by a security guard at the Ecuadorian embassy who warned her that people had been plotting to potentially steal, this was quite bizarre, steal her children's nappies and somehow to test for Julian Assange's DNA. test for Julian Assange's DNA. And we also heard suggestions during the hearings and details that of other plans to kidnap or maybe even kill Assange. This relates to some extent to a separate

strand arising from a Spanish private security company, which had been carrying out some surveillance off the Ecuadorian embassy. So, you know, buzzing around in the background, you've had these claims and these, perhaps, you know, Assange's supporters would say that there's actually a lot more weight to these claims. We would expect that particularly the Yahoo News investigation allegations may play a part in any further legal challenges, which his legal team might make.

Right. And what are those? I guess, does he have any more options? I guess this isn't the end of the line for him, right? No. I mean, a lot of a lot of road has been used up, but there's still quite a bit of road left. So we've spoken a little bit about how the battles at this stage have been around. Should he be sent to the US? Is it safe to do so? But we still have the possibility of a revisiting

by Julian Assange's legal team of the original arguments about why WikiLeaks, and he did what they did, and they did it in the public interest. They were acting as journalists. And so we may see the possibility of what's called a cross appeal here in the UK, which would sort of rewind the clock a little bit and potentially you see things going through the courts again.

We're also waiting for the British Home Secretary, Priti Patel, to rule on whether she's willing to extradite him to the US. And this is after a development this week, where essentially a court rubber stamped the existing application for his extradition. And then even after those two things, you have a potential possibility of a challenge in the longer term to Europe, which could really slow things down as well. In terms of the British legal system, Britain's left the European Union, but it's still part of a European court legal strand. Julian Assange is no hero. He is hidden from the truth for years and years.

And it is right that his future should be decided in the British judicial system. Interesting. Let's say he is extradited to the United States. What kind of jail time or consequences are we talking about here? The Espionage Act in the US, as I understand it, it carries a maximum sentence of 170 years in prison. That's a figure which is wielded. It's potentially not the length of time which

he is likely to spend, and actually maybe considerably less and also it could be a period of time which if the US packages anything to go by he could spend in Australia but nonetheless any length of time in the US is too much for Julian Assange's supporters and for his family especially since they say he's an innocent man. And in addition to that, there's that fear on their part that from what we know of the discussions in the US about potentially or allegedly targeting him, that it's a dangerous environment for him to be sent into. So during the legal hearings, we heard discussions about particularly the Trump White House and how they viewed him

and how senior figures in the US intelligence services viewed him. But we're often reminded too that Joe Biden, that he had described Julian Assange as a high-tech terrorist. So whatever the length of time he spends in the US, prisons in the US, prison system or in Australia, there's that nagging and niggling concern for his life as well at the root of everything. Yeah. And you talked during this conversation about his supporters, of course, his wife. But I wonder if you could just paint me a picture of who his supporters are sure well i personally i think one of the one of the

interesting things about about wikileaks about and about this this story around julian assange is the the extent to which it support for him is really a spectrum of people you know it's a broad spectrum of people and we mentioned trump a little while ago but even at one stage i think when he was running for president trump had expressed his admiration for WikiLeaks in a very Trumpian way. He said, I love WikiLeaks. And as we know, there was a component of the U.S. of that election in which leaks played a role. This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove. Donald Trump, October 31st, 2016.

Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks. Donald Trump, October 31st, 2016. Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks. Donald Trump, November 4th, 2016. Would any of those quotes disturb you, Mr. Director? I'm not certain I would say. How do you react to that? understatement in terms of what it displays in terms of giving some, I don't know, hope or some boost to what is and should be illegal activity. Back in the UK, he draws very strong support from libertarian and left liberal people and politicians. Earlier this week, the former leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, spoke to people outside of the court, where there's this

sort of absence, perhaps, of support is from maybe from the centre of politics. It doesn't appear to be a priority for the current opposition party, but Assange draws considerable support from NGOs who had operated in Afghanistan and Iraq and obviously Amnesty International and organizations like Reporters Without Borders have been very, very vocal in holding this case up as a totemic, iconic moment. And these supporters, what do they say about the kind of precedent that an extradition could set here? Well, they say lots of things. I mean, it's essentially delivering into the hands of, as they would see it, a country which has committed war crimes,

the man who blew the whistle on those war crimes. And we're reminded, if it's him, then it could be any journalist outside of the US at any point. So, you know, that would be a precedent of sorts. I mean, in the past, even though people view the, I think quite rightly, they view the extradition treaty, which exists between the US and Britain as being uneven and uneven in favour of the US. In the past, there have been cases where the British government has denied the extradition of hackers, those who've hacked into US authorities and systems on the basis of their mental health and the risk which incarceration in the US would pose to them. So those cases have resulted in frustration for the US.

So a new precedent of sorts would be set in that way, where he'd be extradited. But I think the main concern on the part of those who support Assange, whether they're in the media or whether they're outside of it, is what it means for press freedom. And, you know, it's something, it's hammered home continually by his wife, by Stella Morris. And just this week, I mean, she said that

she described the court hearing where his extradition was rubber-stamped by that court. She described it as a formality, but she said she still felt sick to her stomach about what had happened. Boris Johnson and Priti Patel, don't extradite Julian to the country that conspired to murder him. Boris Johnson and Priti Patel can stop this at any time. They can stop it today. So, you know, we're at a particular point, you know, we're not at the end point or we're not nearing an end point, but we're at a particular point in this saga now. We really, really appreciate your time. Thank you. You're welcome.

All right, that is all for this week. Front Burner is brought to you by CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show is produced by Simi Bassey, Imogen Burchard, Ali Janes, Katie Toth, Julia Sisler, Lauren Donnelly, and Derek Vanderwyk. Our sound design was by Mackenzie Cameron, Nooruddin Khorani, and we'll talk to you next week.