The unrelenting pursuit by America exposed how far officialdom will go to hide the truth

It was a messy ending to an often chaotic story. Julian Assange was released last week from Belmarsh prison to board a flight to the US-governed Pacific island of Saipan. There, under a special deal with the US authorities, he pleaded guilty in court to illegally securing and publishing classified documents in exchange for a prison sentence of five years, which he had already served in British prisons. And so, for the first time in 12 years, Assange found himself a free man.

Having to plead guilty to espionage was a necessity for Assange to gain personal freedom. But it raises wider questions about journalistic freedom. Assange has been charged with espionage not because he spied for a foreign government but because he did what many journalists do: he published classified material that the US government did not want the public to see. The charges Assange faced “rely almost entirely on conduct that investigative journalists engage in every day”, Columbia University’s Jameel Jaffer, an expert on free speech, observed in 2019 when the indictments were first brought. That is why “the indictment should be understood as a frontal attack on press freedom”.

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Incident reignites concerns over crackdown on media before crucial UN climate talks in Baku later this year

Western journalists were refused entry to an energy industry conference in Azerbaijan earlier this month, reigniting concerns over the state’s crackdown on the media ahead of crucial UN climate talks in Baku later this year.

At least three journalists from the UK and France have told the Guardian that they felt “unsafe” after they were denied entry to the Baku Energy Week forum, despite registering with the event organisers weeks in advance.

Royal told to attempt to retrieve messages, which judge says may be relevant to his legal battle with NGN

The Duke of Sussex has been ordered to explain why messages with his ghostwriter were destroyed after the publication of his memoir Spare when they could be relevant to his legal battle with the publishers of the Sun.

Prince Harry was also told to attempt to retrieve the messages from the messaging service Signal, and his lawyers ordered to search through his other texts, WhatsApp messages and emails from 2005 to January 2023, when his bestselling autobiography was published, for relevant documents.