An Impending Arrest !

The Julian Assange story seems likely to finally reach its conclusion.  Since 2012 he has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, protected from arrest because he skipped bail to avoid being deported to the US where he would probably face life imprisonment - or even execution - for the revelation of state secrets.

Assange is now 47 and as a younger man he founded Wikileaks.  With the help of a complicit US soldier who worked in data transmission he gained copies of matters that both the US government and the CIA hoped would forever remain secret.   Wikileaks released that to the world and still has a trove of information that it threatens to reveal.

The US soldier charged and found guilty of what the court regarded as espionage has served his time and had a pardon from President Obama.   He has had a sex change operation and now - as Chelsea Manning - is back in civilian life with a clean record.  It is Assange who regularly addresses the media and the public from the safety of his London bolthole.

Assange has his supporters and they regularly gather outside the embassy to protest the British governments pursuance of charges which has resulted in a ring of police surrounding the embassy to prevent his escape.  Assange is an Australian citizen and our London embassy provides him with regular consular contact, but stays well clear of the issue of theft of state secrets which has propelled Assange to infamy.

Now it seems the Ecuadoreans have tired of his presence and are threatening to evict him into the waiting arms of the London police.  If that happens, it is certain that what follows will make news headlines, and the British government may welcome that as a diversion from the Brexit mess.  It will certainly force the US government to show its hand if it seeks to have Assange deported to America to face criminal charges, something that it has neither admitted or denied.

This Wikileaks saga raises an uncomfortable reality that is present in the records of most government agencies.  Things they do as a national necessity that are clearly illegal and break moral codes cause embarrassment when they are revealed, as happened with Wikileaks.  It can be argued that Wikileaks is providing a public service by cleaning up governments and making them pay a price for secrets they never expected the public to learn.  It could be argued that when governments break the law they have no right to state confidentiality.

Julian Assange has his detractors and supporters in the court of public opinion. How this Wikileaks issue works out will certainly be in the full glare of the world media.