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Wikileaks Julian Assange freed from UK

COGwriter

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange made a deal with the US government which has agreed that the five years he just served in a UK jail was enough punishment for his revealing of information the US government did not want released. Prior to his arrest in 2019, he was confined at the Embassy of Ecuador since 2012, so he has been “punished” (or otherwise confined for at least 12 years–and over 13 if you count other matters). Here are some reports:

June 25, 2024

A plane carrying Julian Assange landed Tuesday in Bangkok for refueling, as the WikiLeaks founder was on his way to enter a plea deal with the U.S. government that will free him and resolve the legal case that spanned years and continents over the publication of a trove of classified documents.

A chartered flight from London that Assange’s wife, Stella, confirmed was carrying her husband landed at Don Mueang International Airport. Officials there told The Associated Press the plane was scheduled to continue on to Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific, where Assange is expected to appear in court on Wednesday. …

“Thirteen-and-a-half years and two extradition requests after he was first arrested, Julian Assange left the U.K. yesterday, following a bail hearing last Thursday, held in private at his request,” said Stephen Parkinson, the chief prosecutor for England and Wales.

The plea deal brings an abrupt conclusion to a criminal case of international intrigue and to the U.S. government’s yearslong pursuit of a publisher whose hugely popular secret-sharing website made him a cause célèbre among many press freedom advocates who said he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing. U.S. prosecutors, in contrast, have repeatedly asserted that his actions broke the law and put the country’s national security at risk. https://apnews.com/article/assange-justice-department-plea-wikileaks-saipan-australia-00eb380879ff636cc9b916f82f82ed40

June 24, 2024

Assange is scheduled to appear in the federal court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific, to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information, the Justice Department said in a letter filed in court.

The guilty plea, which a judge must approve, abruptly ends a criminal case of international intrigue and the U.S. government’s yearslong pursuit of a publisher whose hugely popular secret-sharing website made him a cause celebre among many press freedom advocates who said he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing. Investigators, by contrast, have repeatedly asserted that his actions broke laws meant to protect sensitive information and put the country’s national security at risk.

He is expected to return to Australia after his plea and sentencing, which is scheduled for Wednesday morning, local time in Saipan, the largest island in the Northern Mariana Islands. The hearing is taking place there because of Assange’s opposition to traveling to the continental U.S., and because of the court’s proximity to Australia.

Assange’s U.S. attorney, Barry Pollack, did not immediately return messages seeking comment Monday.

The deal ensures that Assange will admit guilt while also sparing him from any additional prison time. He had spent years hiding out in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London after Swedish authorities sought his arrest on rape allegations before he was locked up in the United Kingdom.

Prosecutors have agreed to a sentence of the five years Assange has already spent in a high-security British prison while fighting to avoid extradition to the U.S. to face charges, a process that has played out in a series of hearings in London. Last month, he won the right to appeal an extradition order after his lawyers argued that the U.S. government provided “blatantly inadequate” assurances that he would have the same free-speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from Britain.

Assange has been heralded by many around the world as a hero who brought to light military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.

But his reputation was also tarnished by rape allegations, which he has denied.

The Justice Department’s indictment unsealed in 2019 accused Assange of encouraging and helping U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks published in 2010. Prosecutors had accused Assange of damaging national security by publishing documents that harmed the U.S. and its allies and aided its adversaries.

The case was lambasted by press advocates and Assange supporters. Federal prosecutors defended it as targeting conduct that went way beyond that of a journalist gathering information, amounting to an attempt to solicit, steal and indiscriminately publish classified government documents. It was brought even though the Obama administration Justice Department had passed on prosecuting him years earlier.

The plea agreement comes months after President Joe Biden said he was considering a request from Australia to drop the U.S. push to prosecute Assange.

Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted of violating the Espionage Act and other offenses for leaking classified government and military documents to WikiLeaks. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017, allowing her release after about seven behind bars.

Assange made headlines in 2016 after his website published Democratic emails that prosecutors say were stolen by Russian intelligence operatives. He was never charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, but the inquiry laid bare in stark detail the role that the hacking operation played in interfering in that year’s election on behalf of then-Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Justice Department officials mulled charges for Assange following the documents’ 2010 publication, but were unsure a case would hold up in court and were concerned it could be hard to justify prosecuting him for acts similar to those of a conventional journalist.

The posture changed in the Trump administration, however, with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017 calling Assange’s arrest a priority.

Assange’s family and supporters have said his physical and mental health have suffered during more than a decade of legal battles, which includes seven years spent inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

Assange took refuge there in 2012 and was granted political asylum after courts in England ruled he should be extradited to Sweden as part of a rape investigation in the Scandinavian country. British police arrested him after Ecuador’s government withdrew his asylum status in 2019, and then he was jailed for skipping bail when he first took shelter inside the embassy.

Although Sweden eventually dropped its sex crimes investigation because so much time had elapsed, Assange has remained in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison during the extradition battle with the U.S. https://www.voanews.com/a/wikileaks-founder-assange-to-plead-guilty-in-deal-with-us-/7668959.html

When he was arrested five years ago, Edward Snowden made some comments:

Snowden: Assange arrest a blow to press freedom

April 11, 2019

Edward Snowden, the former security contractor who leaked classified information about U.S. surveillance programs, says the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a blow to media freedom.

“Images of Ecuador’s ambassador inviting the UK’s secret police into the embassy to drag a publisher of–like it or not–award-winning journalism out of the building are going to end up in the history books,” Snowden said in a tweet.

“Assange’s critics may cheer, but this is a dark moment for press freedom.”

Snowden was charged by the United States in 2013 of violating the country’s espionage act. He was granted asylum by Russia that year and the asylum has been extended until at least 2020. https://www.apnews.com/328522adb35b4445a3fb875d63fb0870

WikiLeaks got in hot water with the USA when it became concerned about the surveillance and similar tactics that the Obama Administration used. Also, its 2016 email releases were believed to have hurt Hillary Clinton’ chances to win the presidential election that Donald Trump ended up winning (see also WikiLeaks releases more–what about Obamagate? and Sanders being pressured to disavow Hillary Clinton endorsement after Wikileaks emails suggest rigged system; DNC chair resigns).

Here is another report about Julian Assange:

June 25, 2024

WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange should never have been jailed in the first place, former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa has told RT in an exclusive interview.

Correa, who granted Assange asylum in his country’s embassy in London in 2012, spoke to RT shortly after the news broke that the Australian had been released from prison in the UK as part of a plea deal with the US Justice Department.

“Julian Assange is persecuted for telling the truth, not for lying. And he is the truth teller, the persecuted, the punished, the one buried alive in a prison, when the ones in prison should have been the war criminals,” Correa said.

In 2010, WikiLeaks released footage of a US military helicopter gunning down civilians in Baghdad three years previously, after mistaking them for armed insurgents. The attack resulted in 12 civilians being killed, including two children and two people working for the Reuters news agency. The video was part of a wider release of top-secret files by WikiLeaks, including documents connected to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From 2011 to 2019, Assange took sanctuary inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London due to fear of extradition to the US. When Ecuador’s next president, Lenin Moreno, revoked his asylum status, Assange was ejected from the embassy and arrested by British police. He then spent five years at the Belmarsh maximum-security prison in London.

Correa said he is “happy” that Assange has been released, but insisted he should have never been targeted in the first place. https://www.rt.com/news/599924-assange-buried-alive-truth-correa/

There are a lot of politics associated with Wikileaks and Julian Assange. I found it interesting that the president of Ecuador specifically mentioned Julian Assange’s involvement with leaking Vatican-related documents as a major reason to terminate his asylum in 2019. Wikileaks posted Vatican documents in 2010, which is before Julian Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador (see WikiLeaks Highlights Vatican’s Influence), but apparently for some reason, other Vatican-related leaks became a reason to terminate his asylum. The Vatican has a lot of international influence, and will have more (cf. Revelation 17).

Here are some links to some other Wikileaks related posts at this COGwriter news page:

There have been various international ramifications of some of what Wikileaks has revealed.

Both the Snowden leaks and WikiLeaks have shown the Europeans that the USA does not trust Europe, considers Europe to be a second or third rate partner, has violated EU law, and that the USA has lied to Europe about this. The Europeans have documented proof and will remember this. It would seem that this will be part of Europe’s justification to later successfully attack the USA, which it will per Daniel 11:39.

The leaks have shown the world that the USA does not have the moral high ground it has long claimed and this will not end up well for the USA.

Julian Assange, perhaps because of his leaking of apparently true information that embarrassed the Democratic party, did not have much support from the mainstream press in the US.

Julian Assange’s matter reminded me of the so-called ‘Pentagon Papers’ release that the mainstream press defended. So, today, I looked for something on that, and located the following:

Alan Dershowitz: Is Julian Assange another Pentagon Papers case?

April 12, 2019

Before WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gained asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, he and his British legal team asked me to fly to London to provide legal advice about United States law relating to espionage and press freedom. I cannot disclose what advice I gave them, but I can say that I believed then, and still believe now, that there is no constitutional difference between WikiLeaks and the New York Times.

If the New York Times, in 1971, could lawfully publish the Pentagon Papers knowing they included classified documents stolen by Rand Corporation military analyst Daniel Ellsberg from our federal government, then indeed WikiLeaks was entitled, under the First Amendment, to publish classified material that Assange knew was stolen by former United States Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning from our federal government.

{mosads}So if prosecutors were to charge Assange with espionage or any other crime for merely publishing the Manning material, this would be another Pentagon Papers case with the same likely outcome. Many people have misunderstood the actual Supreme Court ruling in 1971. It did not say that the newspapers planning to publish the Pentagon Papers could not be prosecuted if they published classified material. It only said that they could not be restrained, or stopped in advance, from publishing them. Well, they did publish, and they were not prosecuted. https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/438578-alan-dershowitz-is-julian-assange-another-pentagon-papers-case/

Anyway, yes, there is selective prosecutions in the US based upon political and social views. Yes, the major media in the US also have biases which can impact prosecution.

Justice in the US is most certainly not blind. And it has gotten worse since 2019.

That said, worse censorship and enforcement against true information is coming.

And that is prophesied in the word of God (cf. Amos 8:11-12). As are persecutions (Luke 21:12; John 15:20).

Some items of possibly related interest may include:

Preparing for the ‘Short Work’ and The Famine of the Word What is the ‘short work’ of Romans 9:28? Who is preparing for it? Will Philadelphian Christians instruct many in the end times? What about modern censoring, censorship, and shadow banning? Here is a link to a related video sermon titled: The Short Work. Here is a link to another: Preparing to Instruct Many.

Internet Censorship and Prophecy Are concerns about internet censorship limited to nations such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. But what about the USA, Canada, and Germany? What about the European Union? What about internet media companies such as Facebook, Google, YouTube, or email services like MailChimp? Has the attempt to control information been made by various ones over the centuries? Was the New Testament affected by it? What about the church throughout the centuries? Has the Bible already been partially censored? Which Bible prophecies point to coming Internet censorship? What about the Book of Amos? What about the coming 666 Beast and final Antichrist? Is there anything that can be done about this? Should Philadelphian Christians be working on anything now? Will preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God vs. a highly media-supported alternative lead to a ‘famine of the word’? More internet censorship is coming as various statements in the Bible support.

Persecutions by Church and State This article documents some that have occurred against those associated with the COGs and some prophesied to occur. Will those with the cross be the persecutors or the persecuted–this article has the shocking answer. There are also three video sermons you can watch: Cancel Culture and Christian Persecution, The Coming Persecution of the Church, and Christian Persecution from the Beast. Here is information in the Spanish language: Persecuciones de la Iglesia y el Estado.

The Snowden Leaks are Leading to the Destruction of the USA Can what happened with the leaks of what the NSA has done help the USA to be taken over? What does the Bible teach that seems to be related to this? Here is a related YouTube video titled Are the Snowden NSA leaks leading to the destruction of the USA?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 25th, 2024 at 7:00 am and is filed under Prophecy.



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