Opinion: Don’t celebrate the indictment of Julian Assange
Julian Assange gestures as he arrives at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London. By Paul Waldman Paul Waldman Opinion writer covering politics Email Bio Follow Opinion writer April 11 at 12:28 PM Julian Assange, I think we can all agree, is a dirtbag. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good thing that he’s been arrested and will apparently be extradited to the United States. British authorities arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Thursday in response to a U.S.
As you probably know, Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012, where he sought asylum to avoid sexual assault charges in Sweden. The Obama administration, while critical of Assange, decided that the First Amendment implications of charging him with a crime were too troubling, so they declined to do so.
That is essentially what Assange is being charged with: conspiring with Chelsea Manning to break into government files. According to the indictment, “Assange agreed to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on United States Department of Defense computers” in order to find more documents.
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