Julian Assange: Future Uncertain After Prison ReleaseJulian Assange: Future Uncertain After Prison Release Julian Assange, the enigmatic founder of WikiLeaks, has been released from British prison and has returned to his home country of Australia after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing US military secrets. His future plans remain shrouded in uncertainty. Personal Plans: Assange’s wife, Stella, has stated that her husband intends to enjoy simple pleasures such as swimming, sleeping in a real bed, and eating real food. He is also expected to continue advocating for human rights and speaking out against injustice. WikiLeaks’ Future: The fate of WikiLeaks, the website Assange founded, is unclear. Assange’s plea deal with the US included an agreement to destroy all unpublished US documents. The site remains online, but its future operations are uncertain. Pardons and Journalism: Assange has expressed hope for a pardon from the US government for the charge he pleaded guilty to. Media analysts fear that his conviction could have a chilling effect on public interest journalism. Political Aspirations: Assange has previously run for office and expressed a desire to clean up Australian politics. However, he has not indicated any recent interest in pursuing electoral ambitions. Social Climate in Australia: Assange’s release has sparked a debate in Australia about secrecy and freedom of information. Some politicians have welcomed his return, while others have condemned his actions. The case of a former army lawyer who was jailed for leaking classified information has highlighted the complexities of information sharing in Australia. Assange’s Ambiguous Stance on the Future: In a 2018 interview, Assange himself expressed uncertainty about his future plans. Despite his enigmatic response, his past actions suggest that he will likely continue to challenge government secrecy and advocate for transparency.
Associated press
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — He ran for office, published hundreds of thousands of leaked government documents online and once lobbied to save his local swimming pool. Julian Assange, one of the most polarizing and influential figures of the information age, is now free after five years in a British prison and seven years of self-imposed exile in a London embassy.
What the future holds for the WikiLeaks founder remains unclear.
Assange, 52, landed in his home country of Australia this week after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing US military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that ended an attempt to extradite him to the United States States. If convicted, this could have led to a long prison sentence.
‘Julian plans to swim in the ocean every day. He plans to sleep in a real bed. He plans to taste real food, and he plans to enjoy his freedom,” his wife, Stella Assange, told reporters Thursday at a news conference where Assange did not attend.
Her husband and the father of her two children would continue to “defend human rights and speak out against injustice,” she said. “He can choose how he does that, because he is a free man.”
Assange himself has given no indications.
Will he “switch off”?
All of Assange’s friends and acquaintances interviewed this week by The Associated Press emphasized that they did not know his future plans and underlined the toll his ordeal took: in prison he spent 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, after which he spent years in self-exile. the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
“I just want him to survive this ordeal and be happy. I don’t care what Julian does next,” said Andrew Wilkie, an independent Australian lawmaker who met Assange before the hacker launched WikiLeaks – and was one of the first politicians to lobby for Australia to intervene in his case.
But some also found it difficult to imagine that Assange would not ultimately return to the worries that had long gripped him.
“I suspect he won’t just switch off, though, and it’s hard to imagine him disappearing into a beach hut forever,” Wilkie added.
Assange was “incapable of ignoring injustice,” said Suelette Dreyfus, a lecturer at the University of Melbourne’s School of Computing and Information Systems, who has known Assange since he was a teenager and hacks into secure networks for fun. Dreyfus, who once lobbied with Assange to save a Melbourne swimming pool, said her friend’s health had deteriorated during his years in a British prison.
“But I suspect he won’t be sitting on the beach for the rest of his life,” she said.
What’s next for WikiLeaks?
It is unclear what will happen to WikiLeaks, the site Assange founded in 2006 as a place to post confidential documents that expose corruption and reveal secret government activities behind warfare and espionage. That work led to him being celebrated by supporters as a crusader for transparency but criticized by national security hawks who insisted his behavior endangered lives and strayed far beyond the bounds of traditional journalism.
The site remains online, although Assange told The Nation in 2023 that it had stopped publishing because of his imprisonment and because state surveillance and the freeze on WikiLeaks funds had deterred whistleblowers. Assange’s plea deal with the US included an agreement to destroy all unpublished US documents.
“Will he go back to WikiLeaks and, if he does, will he do it differently? I don’t know,” said Wilkie, the lawmaker.
Will he be pardoned?
One issue where Assange’s views are well known is his hope for a pardon from a current or future US president for the charge he pleaded guilty to as part of his deal.
Media analysts are concerned that the conviction could have a chilling effect on public interest journalism. Assange has always maintained that he is a journalist and that the case could lead to the prosecution of other reporters, said Peter Greste, a professor at the University of Queensland and a former foreign correspondent who was jailed in Egypt for his reporting.
Could he run for office?
In the past, Assange had plans to be elected. In 2013, he and his WikiLeaks party made an unsuccessful attempt to gain control of the Australian Senate. However, he has never indicated that he wants to participate in the elections again.
“If you turn on a bright light, the cockroaches run away. That is what we need to do with Canberra,” he told the news program 60 Minutes that same year, when asked why he wanted to enter politics.
But where the then government despised Assange – a mutual feeling, he said – he was given a hero’s welcome in his home country on Wednesday, including by some politicians and a public that had previously not supported him.
It reflected a slow reversal of attitudes about the WikiLeaks founder in Australia – but there was also a strange tension. In a recent high-profile case, an Australian judge sentenced a former army lawyer to nearly six years in prison for leaking classified information that exposed allegations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan. Assange’s legal team reported the case on Thursday.
Analysts said this case and others, along with the renewed focus on Assange, drew attention to a fraught national culture of information secrecy that was even endorsed by some politicians celebrating Assange’s freedom.
“We have some of the most restrictive legislation in the world on access to public information, and we have no constitutional protections for freedom of the press or freedom of expression,” Greste said. “I hope Julian will also get involved in campaigns to support freedom of the press and transparency and accountability of information in Australia.”
Even when Assange discussed the idea of what he might do next — in a 2018 interview for the World Ethical Digital Forum that was seen as his last public appearance before going to jail — he was characteristically enigmatic.
“I don’t know,” he said. “No, I mean, I know. But I don’t know what to answer that question.”
