The new editor of the megafiltration site denounces the persecution of Assange and impacts with new publications

 
The new editor of the megafiltration site denounces the persecution of Assange and impacts with new publications

New airs for WikiLeaks
Given the restrictions imposed by the Ecuadorian embassy, ​​where he is isolated, Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, named the Icelandic journalist Kristinn Hrafnssn in September to replace him as editor-in-chief.

By Santiago O'Donnell
Tic toc tic toc. The hours pass, the days the months, the years and the view does not change: down the street, in front of a large building of exposed red bricks. A red wall with glass holes in the charming London neighborhood of Knightsbridge. From his window downstairs Julian Assange can not see the sky. Only bricks that never change places. Every so often he steps in if the bricks have moved, playing with his mind to fight the monotony. But everything remains the same. For more than six years, the founder of the iconic megafiltration site, WikiLeaks, lives in the confines of the Ecuadorian embassy of the British capital, locked in two small rooms, a pantry, a bathroom and a dining room.

 He does not like to spend a lot of time looking at the window. He is afraid that he is hit by a sniper. Collect death threats online and take them seriously. The embassy has a balcony. He has used it but barely, always under strict security measures, either to make an important announcement or to show himself with a figure. They were the only times he felt the fresh air on his face and could see the sunlight. In the balcony photos you can see the pink cheeks and the small eyes.

His situation is delicate on several fronts. He needs to go to the dentist urgently to get a tooth that broke more than two years ago. He has an arm that he can not lift beyond his waist and that no doctor checked thoroughly, either with an MRI or an ultrasound. He is pale and skinny because of the conditions of his confinement, not to mention his battles on all conceivable fronts, he needs psychological assistance. He is also in charge of the care and hygiene of a cat, with whom he shares spaces, a decision he probably regrets today, even if his "Embassy Cat" has thousands of followers on Twitter.

 However, the British authorities do not allow him to visit a clinic for a tooth extraction or for a shoulder resonance, nor allow him to walk an hour a day in an internal courtyard adjacent to the embassy, ​​as requested by the editor's lawyers Australian to prevent his health from deteriorating further. For British justice Assange is a fugitive who violated his conditional freedom, since they do not recognize the asylum that Ecuador gave him. Assange, who was living under a probation regime due to a Swedish arrest warrant, applied for asylum after the British Supreme Court ruled 3-2 against him and ordered him to surrender to the authorities.

Today Assange has no more problems with the Swedish justice. For years, a prosecutor requested her arrest to be investigated for an alleged sexual offense, but the case was filed in May 2017 without a formal accusation. Beyond that circumstance, as soon as Assange leaves the embassy, ​​he will be arrested by British justice. In that country, evading justice is not a very heavy crime. He has up to a year of punishment and almost always is paid with a fine. The problem for Assange is that at the time of his arrest he would be within extradition range of the United States, where in Arlington, Virginia, a Grand Jury has filed formal charges against him for the 2010 and 2011 megafiltrations of war offices and diplomatic cables. . The law of Virginia allows that the charges formulated by a Grand Jury remain "sealed" or under secrecy until the public prosecutor makes them public, an issue that usually occurs just before the arrest, so as not to lose the element of surprise. So Assange and his lawyers believe that if he were arrested in Britain for even a few hours, a mechanism would be put in place to keep him in custody until he was sent to the United States, where he would be accused of treason and terrorism and sentenced to several decades. of prison.

 From a political point of view, Assange's situation is also very complicated. Although he obtained a great diplomatic triumph three years ago when a United Nations panel ruled that he was a political prisoner of Great Britain and Sweden, his situation did not improve, but rather the opposite. The following year Lenin Moreno replaced Rafael Correa in the presidency of Ecuador and Assange lost the support of the Ecuadorian government. Before, it had lost its main support at the global level, the Unasur of the progressive leaders who then ruled the region. In one of his first statements, Moreno said that Assange was a nuisance and that he should surrender to the English. The relationship with the British Foreign Office was never good. An eventual rise to power of the Labor Corbyn could unblock the situation, since Corbyn would be willing to offer the guarantees of not being extradited that Assange demands to surrender. But six years have gone by now, and for now the conservatives are still ruling.

The relationship with the United States is not good either. At first Trump had praised WikiLeaks for megafiltrations about Hillary Clinton that helped him defeat his Democratic rival in the 2016 presidential elections. But everything changed when WikiLeaks continued to publish Trump's CIA secrets in two megafiltrations called Vault 7 and Vault 8 There the White House resident, with the hawks fluttering, changed the song and publicly ordered his then attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to accelerate the case against Assange and WikiLeaks.

Assange's situation worsened even more in the middle of last year when, through Twitter, he supported the Catalan independence movement, which he called to perfect its computer networks. The public councils of Assange provoked the reaction of several countries of the European Union with problems of several separatisms, which added to the long list of WikiLeaks enemies. That list, with the Pentagon and the State Department at the head, also had the anger of Russia by adding the Emails of Bashir Al Assad with Russian officials in 2017 and especially last year, when he added a chapter with Russian firms to his famous "Spy Files" file dedicated to espionage agents and equipment for sale through private contractors. China not to mention, WikiLeaks.com is banned for years by old revelations.

In the middle of that fragile board, with few supports and many open fronts, the tweets about Catalonia triggered a chain reaction. Before the European complaints the Ecuadorian embassy, ​​under strict orders of Quito, took drastic measures. He forbade Assange to receive visitors except his lawyers, forbade him from making public statements about countries "friends" of Ecuador (that is, practically everyone) and cut off his access to the Internet. He even forced his lawyers to leave cell phones at the door of the embassy.

In the face of such an emergency Assange also took drastic measures and in September of last year he appointed Icelandic journalist Kristinn Hrafnssn to replace him as editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.

Since then, not much has changed. Assange remains in legal and political limbo as his health deteriorates and his hosts seem to lose patience. And WikiLeaks under Hrafnssn continues to publish secret documents with global impact. The last leak, last Tuesday, reveals secret communications between Pope Francis, an archbishop and the main leaders of the Order of Malta, one of the oldest and most influential institutions of the Catholic Church. The texts show that Francisco asked that a senior official of the order be displaced for distributing condoms in Africa.

Last month, also under the general edition of Hrafnsnn, WikiLeaks published the locations in the cloud of servers used by Amazon to store data, which in addition to selling books online is a Pentagon contractor. Already in October the Icelandic journalist had made his debut as general editor of WikiLeaks with a secret document of an abitraje for a sale of arms from France to the Arab Emirates.

Hrafnssn had been a spokesperson for WikiLeaks since 2010. During that period he was the public face of the publication, a kind of ambassador and spokesperson of the publications site, participating in various programs and congresses on journalism, freedom of expression and cyberdemocracy in different forums academic, social and political throughout the world. He is one of the very few WikiLeaks members listed as such with first and last name. Of long and recognized trajectory, before its work with Assange, the National Union of Journalists of its country had named it three times Journalist of the Year by diverse investigations in its program of tevé "Kompás". His first job for WikiLeaks was to complete the investigation and edit in 2010 the famous video "Collateral Murder" which shows, with a chilling audio of the executioners, how a US helicopter gunshot machine a Reuters photographer and then a group of people trying to assist him in Baghdad, in July 2007.

Hrafnssn is skinny, tall, ash blonde, ice blue eyes, affable smile, strong and clear voice, friendly but impenetrable. On the phone from Reykjavik, while waiting for the situation of Assange to be resolved at any time, tell the latest news.

- How is Assange?

-Not well. So many years of confinement are taking their toll. Your health is worse, you need urgent medical attention. It is absolutely shameful that the British government denies him a safe conduct and does not recognize his asylum status.

- When was the last time you saw him?

-One month ago. Now they have relaxed the situation and are allowed to receive some visits. They have also returned Internet access, but their living conditions remain very restrictive. The ambassador must approve each contact and I know that many requests have been denied. They also keep watch 24 hours a day.

- How did you assume the direction of WikiLeaks?

-It was at that time that I did not have access to visits or to the Internet. He asked me to assume this role because I had too many problems. We have been working together since 2009 and I had no problem in saying yes. At this moment, Julian is busy with his processing in Virgina, which includes thousands of documents and the testimony of dozens of people. It is an absurd prosecution because I understand that it covers the publications of 2010 and 2011. These leaks were shared and disseminated by dozens of the world's media, including yours. It intrigues me to know what the Grand Jury will do with the media and journalists who collaborated with WikiLeaks.

- It does not seem ironic to him that Assange, for many an icon of the freedom of expression, is perhaps today the person with less freedom of expression of the world?

-Yes, it's a very dark irony. What hurts me most is that journalists do not see or do not seem to care about the seriousness of the situation. It is a great tragedy for the whole society that a journalist is locked up for doing his job, which is to reveal truths and expose the malice of some people.

- How is WikiLeaks under your editorial direction?

-We follow the same path and there will be dramatic changes. The model is very simple, it works very well and it is not easy to close it (it refers to the data collection system that can not be tracked and the network of mirror servers scattered around the world to resist cyber attacks). There may be minor adjustments because Julian and I have different personalities, but in the editorial we maintain the same strategy and we hope to continue publishing useful information.

And meanwhile, in the embassy, ​​time does not stop happening, too fast, like slipping out of hand. The presidents, the leaks, the diplomatic intrigues and the judicial causes pass. The nights of online sleeplessness with cyberpunks, the endless meetings with lawyers. The visits of Pamela Anderson and her dad's. Everything passes in front of the eyes as if it were an endless movie. That's why every so often he looks out the window. The bricks do not change. Still there.