THE Delhi Union of Journalists, in a statement issued on June 25, has expressed delight on learning that Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, will finally be freed. After years of incarceration and diplomatic warfare over Assange’s ‘crimes’ this champion of free speech was given bail by a British court and permitted to leave the country on June 24, 2024.

Assange will fly to a US territory, the Northern Mariana Island, where he will appear before a court and enter a plea bargain, plead guilty, receive a sentence for time already spent in jail and finally return to his native Australia.

The US government had spent years trying to extradite Assange from Britain and try him in an American court on multiple counts of espionage and conspiracy. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who played an active role in negotiations for the release, alongside several Australian legislators and pressure groups, said, “the case has dragged on for too long, there is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia”. Human rights groups and journalists’ bodies worldwide had demanded that Assange be freed. The US finally gave in.

Assange had been charged with leaking sensational US military records and other classified information, on his web portal in 2010, 2011 and subsequent years. Some of the information had been supplied by military officer Chelsea Manning. The documents revealed rules for ill treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, espionage of the European Commission and Central Bank, espionage in various countries, secret US arming of Yemeni forces and other covert American operations worldwide.  

He was arrested in December 2010 on a trumped up rape charge by a Swedish woman and surrendered to London police. He got bail and in 2012 was granted asylum by the Ecuadorian Embassy where he lived confined for five years until the Embassy revoked the asylum. He was then put in a British prison for five years.

The Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ) welcomes the return of Assange to freedom and hails him as a fierce fighter for democracy and the rights of journalists to reveal the truth, no matter the consequences. This is a victory for all the journalists’ organisations and human rights groups that have campaigned vigorously for Assange’s release, DUJ said.