The Luck of Julian Assange Has Finally Run Out

Assange could run but he couldn’t hide from the long arm of the U.S. government.

“Thousands of people gathered around the British parliament on Saturday 8 October 1922 to form the first-ever human chain to surround the building to protest against Julian Assange’s continued imprisonment and extradition.” October 11, 2022. (Photo: Alisdare Hickson)

Celebrities, politicians, and would-be politicians have defended him. Protestors and human rights activists have supported him, Amnesty International has begged for the U.S. to drop all charges against him, but in the end, none of it seems to have mattered.

Julian Assange, of Wikileaks fame, just lost his latest bid to stop extradition to the United States and may soon be facing serious espionage charges stateside.

“Julian Assange ‘dangerously close’ to US extradition after losing latest legal appeal,” wrote Ben Doherty for The Guardian on June 8, 2023.

For those who haven’t been following the case, Julian Assange is an Australian journalist, publisher, and activist who gained international prominence as the founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, an organization that publishes classified information and leaks from anonymous sources.

Assange became well-known in 2010 when WikiLeaks released a series of highly controversial documents, including the “Collateral Murder” video, which showed a US military helicopter firing on and killing civilians in Iraq. WikiLeaks also published classified documents related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as thousands of diplomatic cables…