by Arjun Walia, The Pulse:
Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange has been in prison for several years experiencing torture while he awaits possible extradition to the United States. All this for exposing truth.
Yesterday marked the 13th anniversary of WikiLeaks’ publication of the Collateral Murder video. The video, which you can see below, shows how two US Apache helicopters participated in the unprovoked slaying of 11 Iraqi people including two Reuters journalists. Two young children involved in the incident were also seriously wounded.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
As a result of exposing this and various other warcrimes, Julian Assange faces a 175 year jail sentence if extradited to the US.
13 years ago today Julian Assange published the Collateral Murder video showing the killing over a dozen people in Iraq, including 2 @Reuters journalists, and seriously wounding 2 children
He faces a 175 year sentence if extradited for truthful publishing https://t.co/GTT00tuoBX pic.twitter.com/DDbpwMWl9g
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 5, 2023
After the video was released one of the soldiers involved in the incident, Ethan McCord, shared the following:
“If you feel threatened in any way, you’re able to engage that person. Many soldiers felt threatened just by the fact that you were looking at them, so they fired their weapons on anybody that was looking at them because they (I) felt threatened. We were told if we were to fire on anybody, and if it were to be investigated, that ‘officers will take care of you.’ ”
“We were told by our battalion commander to kill every m***** f****** on the street. Many soldiers would not do that, we decided we were going to shoot into the rooftops of buildings because, if you didn’t fire, the NCOs in your platoon would make your life hell.”
“This happens on a daily basis, destroying vans full of children, the destruction of the Iraqi people happens on a daily basis.”
For those of you who don’t know, Assange is the founder of Wikileaks, an organization that obtained genuine classified documents from various sources. These documents exposed various war, environmental, financial and other crimes by multiple governments around the world, especially the United States.
They also revealed the corruption within the intimate relationships between big multinational corporations, whether it be pharmaceutical or big food companies, and agencies like the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). In short, many of these documents exposed unethical and immoral actions by powerful entities that are tasked to serve the people.
Assange was charged under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, largely for actions rightfully recognized as protected news-gathering practices.
Assange has been held in prison in the United Kingdom for several years, subjected to torturous treatment while the US attempts to to extradite him to face criminal charges.
