LONDON, ENGLAND - MAY 19: Julian Assange speaks to the media from the balcony of the Embassy Of Ecuador on May 19, 2017 in London, England. Julian Assange, founder of the Wikileaks website that published US Government secrets, has been wanted in Sweden on charges of rape since 2012. He sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and today police have said he will still face arrest if he leaves. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)US government pressure to criminalise Assange combined with cancel culture to keep him in Belmarsh without mainstream media saying too much about the case (Photo: Jack Taylor/Getty Images)Julian Assange is to be freed, if all goes according to plan, after five years of incarceration in Belmarsh high security prison for doing what every journalist should do. This is to find out information of importance and pass it on to the public.It has really always been as simple as that, despite unrelenting efforts by the US and UK governments to pretend that what the founder of WikiLeaks did in publishing a hoard of US government documents in 2010 was not journalism but espionage.Assange has taken a plea deal in which he will be found guilty of one charge of espionage, in return for the United States dropping its extradition request. After a hearing in the Northern Mariana Islands, he will walk free.It was depressing but unsurprising to find that even now, many commenting on Assange’s impending release are repeating long discredited untruths about the original WikiLeaks disclosures. One falsehood that never seems to die is that the leak led to the death or risked the lives of US agents whose identities were disclosed.But a Pentagon review taskforce headed by a senior counter-intelligence officer, Brigadier-General Robert Carr, which sought to show that at least some of those identified by WikiLeaks were endangered, came up with nothing.In testimony given at the sentencing hearing of Chelsea Manning – the US soldier responsible for the leak – in July 2013, Carr revealed that his team of 120 counter-intelligence officers had been unable to find a single person who could be shown to have died or to have been harmed because of WikiLeaks’ disclosures.
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