Julian Assange is not universally admired. His revelation of Western military secrets was unsettling to many. An awkward character, who quarrelled with journalistic colleagues and became an unwelcome guest during his seven years of incarceration in the embassy of Ecuador in London, he now risks extradition to the United States and a prison sentence for espionage of up to 175 years. 

 Wikileaks, the organisation that he founded in 2006, has published more than 10 million classified files. They caused acute embarrassment for governments around the world, mainly in the West. They have revealed tales of corruption and wrongdoing that it has been unquestionably in the interests of Western citizens to know. 

 British and American officials have been trying to get him extradited to the United States since 2010. He has effectively been incarcerated, first in the Ecuadorean embassy and then in London’s Belmarsh Prison, for the last 12 years and is in poor health, both mentally and physically. The source of his most sensational revelations, Chelsea Manning, has already been released after completing seven years of a 35-year sentence. 

 Assange’s case has sometimes been compared to that of Alexei Navalny, both revealing the cruel and oppressive face of the state. It would be in the interests of the United States to drop the case against him, recognising that the West can learn from its mistakes and demonstrating that the parallel is unfounded. 

 US lawyers have argued that the Wikileaks revelations put the lives of US government informants at risk, but no actual harm has ever been proved. In contrast, it has been alleged that the CIA discussed the possibility of kidnapping and murdering Assange. 

 The experience of the Australian activist, who has been made an honorary citizen of Rome, has exposed the servile attitude of the British authorities towards their most powerful ally. Craig Murray, a former British ambassador who has chronicled the Assange trials, described the process — dominated by individuals with establishment and security service ties — as “a  travesty and a charade marked by undisguised institutional hostility”. 

 Handing over Assange is not the right thing to do and is unlikely to garner any favours or prop up what was once known as the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States.     

 Dropping this shameful judicial persecution, that has been condemned by human rights organisations and the UN, would help to show there is a real difference between democratic states and the state that killed Navalny. 

jp & jlb