The United States was forced to deal with Julian Assange. This was revealed by the Washington Post, citing various sources and a memorandum sent last April 4 by the Attorney for Europe of the Department of Justice, in which he warned the Administration that the battle to bring the founder of Wikileaks, accused of having published, since 2010, hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents, would have had a negative outcome. The British judges, he explained, would have had a “moral obligation to close the case” due to “their duty to impartiality”. Last April, Great Britain had asked the United States for guarantees on freedom of speech, which in their opinion Assange should have enjoyed like any other American citizen and set an ultimatum for the granting of such guarantee. If an agreement had not been made by that date, the United States would have lost all its negotiating strength and perhaps even its British lawyers, who were increasingly convinced of the wall they were destined to hit.
«The emergency has now reached a critical point. The case will end up on appeal and we will lose”, wrote the Attorney in an email that ended up in the hands of the American newspaper, after months of attempts to convince the Justice Department of the opportunity to reach an agreement.
Assange was indicted in the US in 2018, after a long debate among the jurists of the Department of Justice on his case, precisely in relation to the First Amendment on freedom of expression, an obstacle overcome by his Australian citizenship and the pronouncements according to which the right does not extend to foreign organizations or individuals. Contrary to what Assange’s supporters said, in the US a sentence of 55 months in prison would have been requested against him if he had returned to the US and pleaded guilty, which in December 2023 had already been served in Great Britain.
