WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says Tuesday’s judgment against Bradley Manning is short-sighted and his whistle-blowing organisation won’t rest until the verdict is overturned.
A US military judge has convicted Manning of espionage leaving him facing a lengthy jail term despite clearing him on the most serious charge that he “aided the enemy”.
Colonel Denise Lind found Manning guilty of 19 of 21 charges related to his leaking of a huge trove of secret US diplomatic cables and military logs to the WikiLeaks website.
Speaking after the judgment Assange described Manning as “the most important journalistic source that the world has ever seen”.
The Australian said Manning’s alleged disclosures had exposed war crimes, sparked revolutions and induced democratic reform.
“He is the quintessential whistleblower,” Assange told a handful of reporters, including AAP, inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London.
He said Tuesday’s ruling was the first ever espionage conviction against a whistleblower in the United States.
“It is a dangerous precedent and an example of national security extremism,” the 42-year-old said.
“It is a short-sighted judgment that cannot be tolerated and it must be reversed.”
Assange said Manning had two appeals available through the US military system and then another to the US Supreme Court.
“WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning’s support team will not rest until he is free.
“There was only ever one just outcome from this trial and that was an acquittal.”
Assange said the aiding the enemy charge against Manning was only ever included “to make calling journalism `espionage’ sound reasonable – but it is not”.
He said the US government had employed the “classic” political technique of over-charging with an “utterly absurd charge in order to hide other charges which are equally absurd but more complex such as espionage”.
Assange said throughout the trial there was as a “conspicuous absence” of evidence that a single person had ever been harmed as a result of Manning’s alleged disclosures.
Further, the US government had never claimed Manning worked for a foreign power despite charging him with espionage, he said.
The WikiLeaks founder said the “abuse” of Manning “had left the world with a sense of disgust at how the (Barack) Obama administration had fallen”.
Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy for more than a year avoiding extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations.
