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Sir, – Anybody interested in a peaceful world will celebrate the belated release from prison of the political prisoner and award-winning journalist and publisher Julian Assange, whose work in the public interest has served the cause of peace-making (“Assange arrives in Australia after being freed by US court”, World, June 26th).
Anyone with any doubts should just watch the online video that shows the targeted killing of nine Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters war correspondents, and the injuring of two children in Baghdad in July 2007, by the crew of two Apache AH-64 helicopter gunships, who can after the killing spree be heard gloating at their actions.
Julian’s work sought to bring transparency and accountability to the dark, corrupt, and criminal activity of governments and militaries, particularly the war crimes of the US government in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His work endangered nobody.
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The US government admitted in an affidavit as far back as 2013 that it had not found any evidence that anyone had come to harm as a result of Wikileaks’s publications.
Yet he was made to suffer incredibly, pursued by an odious, blood-drenched US government while locked up in a tiny cell 23 hours a day for over five years in the notorious Belmarsh prison.
Julian should never have been imprisoned and could have been released much earlier had media organisations and governments joined the international campaign to free him. In October 2021, our organisation with many others penned a detailed letter to the then-minister for foreign affairs, Simon Coveney, to lobby by all means necessary, including via Ireland’s then membership of the United Nations Security Council, for Julian’s release.
The letter was subsequently launched as an Uplift Campaign and signed by several hundred people, including many Irish personalities and trade unionists.
We are still awaiting a reply.
If media pundits and organisations, including those who benefitted from Julian’s journalism, are concerned that his understandable plea deal – as you note in your editorial (“The Irish Times view on the release of Julian Assange: free at last, but at a price”, June 25th) – “may yet have a prolonged impact on restricting investigative and national security journalism in the US”, then let them lead a campaign for a total pardon for Julian.
He deserves no less. – Yours, etc,
JIM ROCHE,
Steering Committee,
Irish Anti-War Movement,
Dublin 1.