Julian Assange extradition: U.S. argues WikiLeaks documents endangered subjects

Feb. 21 (UPI) -- A British court will decide the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after closing arguments were made in his two-day extradition trial Thursday.

Attorneys for Assange argued he is a journalist and that publishing classified documents provided by U.S. army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was an act of journalism, the BBC, U.K. Independent and Al Jazeera reported.

At London's Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday his attorneys also argued the United States is retaliating against Assange and it would violate U.K. law to extradite him to the United States.

Attorney Mark Summers argued the United States wants "retribution" for Assange's political opinions, which amounts to state retaliation due to Assange's views regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Summers also argued the United States allegedly planned to kidnap or kill Assange while he sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years prior to his imprisonment in 2019.

Summers argued that Assange only inadvertently published the unredacted documents and that public interest regarding the U.S. war crimes would justify the release of the information.

Summers added that the people whose names were released were "agents in the criminality that has been exposed" and there was not sufficient proof they had been harmed.

U.S. attorneys said Assange "put lives at risk" and should not be treated like a journalist, nor should WikiLeaks be treated as a journalistic publication. The attorneys said Assange encouraged and helped Manning obtain about 400,000 classified documents and 250,000 State Department communications regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he published on WikiLeaks.

Publishing the unredacted documents in their entirety created significant consequences for many who were identified in the documents, attorney Clair Dobbin argued. She said they were threatened with arrest, lost assets, and endured harassment after Assange created a "grave and imminent risk" of bodily harm.

"These are people who had to leave their homes, flee their homelands, because they had been identified in the State Department cables," she said.

Dobbin added that some individuals who "lived in war zones or under oppressive regimes" had "subsequently disappeared" since the documents were published.

Dobbin and attorney James Lewis argued the WikiLeaks exposure amounts to one of the worst cases of compromising classified information in U.S. history.

The United States wants Assange, 52, extradited to the United States to face espionage charges for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents on WikiLeaks. He has spent the past five years fighting extradition from inside Belmarsh prison in the United Kingdom.

Assange is from Australia and did not attend either day of the trial or view its proceedings remotely via a video link from Belmarsh prison due to illness, his attorney told the High Court in London.

A district judge in January 2021 ruled Assange was a suicide risk if deported to the United States and should not be extradited. The judge also ruled that Assange was not acting in a journalistic capacity when publishing the classified materials on WikiLeaks.

U.S. attorneys appealed that decision to the High Court in London, which overturned the district judge's ruling and made it possible for the United States to extradite Assange and try him for conspiracy.

Assange appealed the lower court's ruling that he isn't a journalist and sought protection against extradition as a journalist.