Gwynne Dyer

Opinion | If Assange had faced rape and sexual assault charges in Sweden, he wouldn’t be looking at jail time now

The WikiLeaks founder should not have sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in 2012. The Obama administration then had no intention of extraditing him. Now Assange is facing a US government led by the wildly inconsistent Trump

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrives at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, after he is arrested in London on April 11. Photo: Reuters

Gwynne Dyer

Published: 9:30pm, 15 Apr 2019Updated: 5:36am, 1 May 2020

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is an unattractive character and has very poor judgment. He should have gone to Sweden seven years ago and faced the rape and sexual assault allegations brought against him by two Swedish women. Even if he had been found guilty, he would probably be free by now under Swedish sentencing rules, since no violence was alleged in either case.

His explanation for taking refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London instead was that he feared that once in Sweden, he would be extradited to the United States – and the US government would try him on charges that could involve a life sentence or even the death penalty.

What had so angered Washington was WikiLeaks’ spectacular dump of more than 700,000 US documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts. The most damaging of the revelations in 2010 was an official video in which the pilots of a US Apache helicopter machine-gunned civilians in Baghdad while making remarks like “oh yeah, look at those dead bastards” and “it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle”.

Donald Trump, then completing his transition from Democrat to Republican, condemned Assange, as his new guise required. “I think it’s disgraceful,” he said. “I think it should be like death penalty or something.”

In fact, Assange faced no immediate threat of extradition in 2012, because President Barack Obama had not encouraged the relevant US officials to make such a request. Indeed, in 2017, just before leaving office, Obama pardoned the WikiLeaks source, former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, after she had served seven years of her 35-year prison sentence.