After 14-Year Campaign, One Catholic Worker Celebrates Assange’s Release

“Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK,” WikiLeaks said in a Tuesday statement.

On Tuesday, the United States Department of Justice reported that Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who had spent nearly 2,000 days in Belmarsh Maximum Security Prison in East London, had agreed to plead guilty in a felony charge. The felony was in regard to his role in WikiLeaks’ publication of U.S. Government classified information. On Monday, Assange left the United Kingdom, where he had been fighting extradition to the United States for over a decade. After a sentencing hearing on the South Pacific island of Saipan, he left the courthouse on Wednesday a free man.

Longtime Catholic Worker activist Ciaron O’Reilly expressed a mix of emotions following the news.

“Julian Assange has pled guilty to a crime he never committed,” O’Reilly told Roundtable in an email from London, noting that “horse trading” is a typical feature of the U.S. justice system. “It’s been 14 years of Julian’s life, detained without charge in England. It’s been 14 years of my life trying to earn the release of Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange. I’m emotionally, physically and mentally exhausted.”

Assange, an Australian editor, publisher, and activist, came to international attention in 2010 when his website, WikiLeaks, published a series of leaks from Chelsea Manning, a former United States Army intelligence analyst. These leaks included footage of a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad, U.S. military logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and U.S. diplomatic cables. Assange spent seven years in self-imposed exile in the Embassy of Ecuador in London after Sweden issued a European arrest warrant for allegations of sexual assault. He was granted asylum by Ecuador in 2012 on the grounds of political persecution and fears he might be extradited to the United States. In 2019, Assange’s asylum was withdrawn, and he was arrested.

The Justice Department agreed to seek a 62-month sentence for Assange, and would credit his time in Belmarsh as counting toward his sentence.

O’Reilly was at Assange’s first court appearance on Dec. 7, 2010, and had been camped outside Belmarsh Prison in London when he was released this past week. O’Reilly first met Assange in 2012, when he and former SAS soldier Ben Griffin were recruited by Sarah Harrison to provide security for the WikiLeaks founder, who had sought asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Over the years, O’Reilly said he grew close to Assange, describing him as a “prophet for our age” despite acknowledging that he “may not be a saint.”

“I was shocked that the most serious resistance to these wars would come from two geeks – Julian and Chelsea Manning! I was even more shocked that they had been abandoned by the millions who had marched against the wars,” O’Reilly lamented, reflecting on the public’s perceived lack of support for the high-profile whistleblowers.

Invoking the words of the late peace activist Phil Berrigan, O’Reilly said that “brothers and sisters in jail speak to our conscience, which is how God speaks to us.” However, he admitted to questioning whether “God had stopped talking or we had stopped listening” after witnessing Assange’s prolonged legal ordeal.

Despite the toll the experience has taken on him, O’Reilly urged others to continue the fight for justice, stating, “Do what you can, where you can, with who you can…for our brothers and sisters before the courts for their non-violent resistance to war.”