Analyse
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If the guilty plea agreement which allowed the founder of WikiLeaks to regain his freedom is not a formal legal precedent, his conviction under the Espionage Act weakens the protection of journalism affecting American defense secrets.
This Wednesday morning, June 26, Julian Assange walked free from the district court of Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands, an American archipelago in the Philippine Sea, some 3,000 km north of the Australian coast. End of fourteen years of confrontation with Washington, after the publication in 2010 of hundreds of thousands of classified documents, and five years of legal battle against his extradition to the United States, spent in the high security prison of Belmarsh. The family and supporters of the founder of WikiLeaks are rightly delighted with this epilogue – all the more ardently desired since they have increased the warnings about the precariousness of his state of health, both physical and psychological. The Assange case is closed. But with what consequences now for press freedom?
“An essential part of a journalist’s work”
Because it is, beyond the sole case of the 52-year-old Australian, what has alarmed since spring 2019 a number of organizations defending rights and freedoms, but also major media, former partners or not of WikiLeaks, and sometimes extremely critical, moreover, of Assange and his developments. Weighed on the latter,
