The Trial of Julian Assange: A Story of Persecution by Nils Melzer
Published in 2022 by Verso, London, UK and New York, NY
320 pages
ISBN: 978-1-83976-622-0
In July 2010, Wikileaks published the Afghan War Diary, a collection of over 91,000 war documents covering the War in Afghanistan from the span of 2004-2010. Considered to be one of the largest military leaks in US history at the time, the documents revealed evidence of the unreported deaths of hundreds of civilians in the region, the involvement of Pakistan and Iran in the Taliban insurgency, cases of psychological and physical torture, and evidence of other war crimes. Before the publication of the initial 75,000 documents, these logs were made available to media outlets, such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and El País.
A few months later, in October, Wikileaks published 391,832 US Army field reports, which detailed the immense proportion of civilian casualties in Iraq, along with evidence of torture, abuse, rape, and murder at the hands of the Iraqi Wolf Brigade under the watch of the US. Surpassing the Afghan War diaries as the largest leak in US military history, these documents were made widely available to the public. Later joined with the leak of over 200 diplomatic cable leaks in November (known as Cablegate), these leaks proved to be the ire of many governments involved in the War in Afghanistan and Iraq, who often labeled Wikileaks as irresponsible and even criminal. Many journalists, on the other hand, found them to be of much interest, defending the leaks as freedom of the press.
The founder of Wikileaks, Australian journalist Julian Assange, found himself in the middle of a firestorm. Accused of hacking, espionage, and sexual assault in Sweden, Assange feared that he would be arrested and extradited to Sweden before being handed over to the United States. As such, after both Sweden and Britain could not guarantee that he would not be extradited, he fled to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he spent the next seven years in political asylum. In 2019, after a long legal battle, the Ecuadorian government handed Assange to the British authorities. Immediately after he was dragged out of the embassy and arrested, the United States ordered his extradition. Currently, he faces up to 175 years in prison on charges of alleged espionage and computer hacking and is being held at Belmarsh Prison, a maximum security facility reserved for the most dangerous and high-profile prisoners.
In 2018, Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, was contacted by Assange’s lawyers to investigate Assange’s case and the conditions he was forced to endure. After initially declining to get involved due to his preconceived notions of the case, Melzer was contacted again several months later by Assange’s legal team. His curiosity now sparked, Melzer decided to visit Assange, who was being held in Belmarsh Prison. As he began to uncover more details about the case, Melzer discovered how, far from being a case of rouge espionage, Assange’s case was one of political persecution. In his 2022 book, The Trial of Julian Assange: A Story of Persecution, Nils Melzer lays out the details of Julian Assange’s case, arguing that the US and British governments conspired together to tarnish his reputation, revoke his basic rights, and ultimately punish him for revealing evidence of corruption.
Overview:
In this meticulously detailed account, Melzer seeks to lay out the facts of Julian Assange’s case. Originally a skeptic who ignored the initial pleas by Assange’s legal team, Melzer slowly realizes that the Assange case is not a simple account of espionage and sexual assault, but rather a painstaking effort by national governments to punish an individual for exposing evidence of war crimes and corruption. Melzer recounts his experiences of meeting Assange in Belmarsh Prison, as well as his correspondence with the various governments that are either actively seeking his extradition and prosecution (England, Sweden, the US) or passively allowing his unjust treatment to continue unopposed (Australia, Germany).
The deeper he dug into the case, the more evidence arose that the UK and US were bypassing the legal process and removing Assange’s most basic legal rights, including due process. For example, Assange’s meetings with his attorneys were recorded and monitored, thus violating attorney-client privilege. After visiting Assange in Belmarsh Prison, Melzer was able to gather evidence from medical records and psychiatric evaluations that Assange had suffered prolonged and intentional psychological torture at the hands of these state actors.
Furthermore, Melzer argues that these states also worked to manipulate the evidence to defame Assange and turn public opinion against him. Melzer reflects on his own biases against Assange before taking the case, which was largely fueled by media coverage and the government’s smear campaign against Assange. This was further exacerbated by the allegations of rape against Assange in Sweden. After ten years of no hard evidence, the case was eventually dropped, but not before Assange was painted as a rapist in addition to his other supposed crimes.
Melzer delicately outlines the facts of the various charges against Assange, using his persecution as an example of powerful governments taking unjust actions against those who expose evidence of corruption. He argues that Assange’s ill-treatment by these Western powers sets a dangerous precedent in how the state handles whistleblowers. Even with his high position of authority, Melzer’s investigation was still obscured as the governmental agencies he contacted continually blocked his access to records, twisted the truth, and outright ignored his inquiries every step of the way. Melzer, with few other avenues to communicate his findings, wrote this work to raise awareness of the attack on freedom of the press that defines the Assange case. He believes that these unjust actions against Assange will have a significant impact by discouraging journalists from investigating government corruption and crimes.
Commendations:
First of all, The Trial of Julian Assange is written in a fast-paced, gripping narrative style, which lends to an incredibly engaging read. Melzer is a gifted storyteller and investigator as he balances the factual details of the case with a clear and exciting narrative flair. He writes in clear and concise language, and, wasting no time with a biography of Assange’s childhood or the founding of Wikileaks, dives headfirst into the details of the case at hand. It more often than not reads as a political crime thriller and courtroom drama series than dry nonfiction, which is much to Melzer’s credit as a talented writer. His background and experience as a lawyer and term as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment lend Melzer a high level of credibility and relative objectiveness in his analysis of the case.
This is supplemented by the fact that he admits his own initial biases against Assange before taking on his case, and the transparency of Melzer’s procedures to obtain evidence makes his argument all the more credible. Like Melzer, I must also admit that before reading this book, I also had many preconceived notions about who Assange was as a person. I vaguely knew him as the guy who, on one hand, exposed evidence of government corruption and war crimes (which I wholeheartedly approved of), but also put many agents in danger by not redacting certain documents and allegedly committing rape in Sweden (which is unquestionably bad). Since I could afford not to pay much attention to the case, I ultimately decided that I had mixed feelings about Assange (admittedly a centrist, easy-way-out answer to have if anyone asked).
After reading Melzer’s book, however, I am much more convinced that Assange, regardless of his culpability regarding the unredacted documents, is being sorely mistreated and psychologically tortured by these national governments. The case is much more complex than what many of us have been led to believe, and Melzer’s work does much to dispel many of the myths that have been built up around both Assange’s actions and his personality. Melzer’s sincere, meticulous, and well-articulated arguments are incredibly convincing and help to illustrate how powerful governments can use legal and extra-legal means to suppress dissent and punish those who threaten their hegemonic position.
Critique:
On the other hand, due to his thoroughness in recounting every detail of the case, Melzer’s account can be a bit repetitive in places. While this illustrates Melzer’s meticulous approach to gathering evidence in the case, this repetitiveness can slow down the narrative thrust of the book.
Additionally, while Melzer attempts to be objective in his treatment of the case, his handling of the sexual assault case can come off as a bit too flippant. It is fair to presume innocence for anyone accused of a crime, but Melzer seems to outright presume that the women in the case are not telling the entire truth about their encounter with Assange. This case becomes especially tricky due to the power dynamics involved (the women were fans of Assange who looked up to him) and Melzer’s continual emphasis on Assange’s Aspergers Syndrome as an explanation for the miscommunication that occurred. The case ends up being a classic case of “he-said, she said” that ultimately cannot be proven or disproven given the extreme mishandling of the case by the Swedish authorities.
My uncomfortableness regarding this case most likely stems from two competing tensions: the presumption of innocence for the accused and the desire to believe women in the face of sexual assault allegations. This is especially true since removing a condom without express consent does constitute rape, although Melzer blames Assange’s autism and lack of social cues as the likely culprit of the sexual misunderstanding. Admittedly, sex is always fraught with ambiguities, and Melzer also makes genuine attempts to sympathize with the women who accused Assange as well.
Regardless of the guilt or innocence of Assange, the Swedish authorities are in the wrong here. If Assange was innocent of the charge, then it is a flagrant disservice to both Assange and the women involved, who were used as pawns in the stalled proceedings to make Assange look worse. If Assange was guilty of this charge, then the entire process is an example of the embarrassing ineptitude of the Swedish police departments, who also used these women and their traumatic experiences as leverage against their perceived enemy. Regardless of what truly happened during those nights between the women and Assange, these women were mistreated every single step of the way, which I believe should be highlighted.
My only other quibble with the book is that, while Melzer neatly articulates the complex details of the case, he does not explicate what should be done to prevent such actions from occurring in future cases. As such, the final few pages of the book are a bit of a letdown, as Melzer eschews any sort of structural change, but rather merely reflects on the capacity of individual human actors to commit evil deeds. It would have potentially been more fruitful to consider how we can challenge the hegemonic power that these states are exercising to punish dissidents and attack the freedom of the press. Melzer’s reflection seems individualistic in the face of such a seemingly insurmountable challenge, although his simple call to free Assange seems like a good place to start.
Conclusion:
Overall, The Trial of Julian Assange is a clear, concise, and eye-opening account of the mistreatment of Assange and how governments use unjust means to silence and impugn those who expose state secrets. While occasionally repetitive due to Melzer’s training as a lawyer and penchant for meticulous detail, the book serves as a fantastic overview of the mistreatment and psychological torture endured by Assange. Even for those who know very little about the case, or even if you have many ideas about it already, Melzer’s detailed and passionate account will inform and challenge your preconceived assumptions about Assange.
Melzer writes with a sense of urgency, as the Assange case is only a representative of a much larger issue within our judicial systems. Melzer rightly expands the handling of Assange to the wider world of investigative journalism, as freedom of the press is being challenged by those who want to keep evidence of crimes and corruption secret from the public, and will use psychological torture, arbitrary confinement, and the seemingly indefinite stalling of court proceedings to do so. Melzer challenges us to consider how our Western constitutional-democratic institutions often fail to live up to their standards, even regarding basic human rights and should be read by anyone interested in the intersection of law, journalism, and political science.
Melzer correctly states that the fate of Assange will be a signal for the future of free speech and human rights in Western society. On June 17, 2022, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel formally approved the US extradition request for Assange. Although this decision has been challenged with appeals from Assange’s team, it remains to be seen what will become of Assange in the near future. Melzer and his team fear for his life, as Assange is already in poor physical and mental health and has expressed suicidal thoughts if he is to be incarcerated in the United States. While the Australian Labour government has weakly stated its support for Assange, it remains yet to be seen if Biden will pardon Assange (as Obama did for Chelsea Manning in the final days of his presidency) or if he will passively let Assange’s suffering continue uninterrupted.
Regardless, these Western states must come face to face with their hypocrisy. If the United States claims to be shocked and appalled by the assassination of journalists in Israel and Saudia Arabia, then it would be a glaring contradiction to psychologically torture and unjustly detain a foreign journalist on our soil as well. The United States often castigates what it deems to be despotic regimes--such as North Korea, Russia, and China--for their human rights abuses and authoritarian actions against freedom of speech and dissent. If what is happening to Assange was happening to an American in a similar position within one of these countries, the US government would rightly be doing everything it could to protect that person. As such, in the spirit of freedom and human dignity, there seems to be but one option left for the West: Free Assange.