Criminal charges were brought against Julian Assange because he named sources and encouraged theft and hacking, not because of politics, lawyers for the US government have claimed at a critical extradition hearing.
The WikiLeaks founder could be extradited to the US within days to face prosecution on espionage charges relating to the publication of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents concerning the Afghanistan and Iraq wars if the high court in London refuses him permission to appeal against his removal from the UK.
On Wednesday, lawyers for the US government sought to rebut the arguments made by the WikiLeaks founder’s counsel the day before, when they claimed the US was seeking politically motivated retaliation for his exposure of state criminality, including torture, rendition and extrajudicial killings.
Assange is being supported by organisations including Reporters Without Borders and the National Union of Journalists, and his lawyers described his prosecution as “unprecedented”. However, Clair Dobbin KC said the charges against him were not political but were brought because he went “far beyond the acts of a journalist who was merely gathering information”.
She told the court: “His prosecution is based upon the rule of law and evidence. The appellant’s prosecution might be unprecedented but what he did was unprecedented.”
Dobbin said Assange had not merely published material but had conspired with and aided and abetted Chelsea Manning in stealing and disclosing classified information. He is also alleged to have sought to recruit other hackers and leakers of classified information.
She said Assange also “knowingly and indiscriminately published to the world the names of individuals who acted as sources of information to the United States”.
The lawyer added: “It is these core facts which distinguish the position of the appellant from the New York Times and other media outlets.
“It is this which forms the objective basis for his prosecution. It is these facts which distinguish him, not his political opinions.”
On Tuesday, Mark Summers KC argued that the publication of unredacted cables was inadvertent but that, even if it were deliberate, the public interest could have outweighed the naming of individuals. He also said that that no harm to any of the named individuals had been proven.
But Dobbin told the court there were people “who had to leave their homes, flee their homelands, because they had been identified in the state diplomatic cables”. She said others lost jobs, had assets frozen or “disappeared”, although their disappearance could not be proved to be as a result of having been named. Dobbin said those affected included individuals in Ethiopia, China, Iran and Syria. “The material that [Assange] published unredacted attracts no public interest whatsoever,” she said. “That’s the weakness at the centre of the appellant’s case.”
Responding on Wednesday, Summers said there was overwhelming public interest in the publications that exposed US war crimes and that the sources named were all “agents in the criminality that has been exposed”.
Assange’s lawyers said he faces a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison but a “likely” sentence of 30 to 40 years. Joel Smith, for the US, said that none of the potential sentences would be “grossly disproportionate” given Assange’s alleged offending “beyond the scope that any of the criminal courts in this country have had to grapple with”.
Assange is hoping the two judges hearing his case will grant his request for a full appeal hearing. If they do not, he will have exhausted all legal challenges in the UK and his only remaining legal avenue will be to apply to the European court of human rights to order the UK not to extradite him while it considers his case. However, if that application is refused he could be removed from the country by US marshals within days.
Assange had been granted permission to attend the two-day hearing but he was said to be too ill to go to the Royal Courts of Justice or to follow the proceedings online.
His supporters protested outside the court for a second day.
The judges will give their decision at a later date.
