Remember Julian Assange? Having dominated headlines in the 2010s, the WikiLeaks founder has dropped out of sight having been confined at London’s Belmarsh prison since 2019. And that was kind of the plan, this impassioned documentary asserts, with the aid of staunch defenders including the late John Pilger, Tariq Ali, Jill Stein, Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsworth and Assange family members. “The persecution of Julian has been a long, slow form of killing somebody,” says Pilger; witnessing Assange’s trajectory from a buccaneering truth-teller to a frail, mentally damaged prisoner, perpetually denied justice, it’s hard to disagree.
According to this documentary by Australian film-maker Kym Staton, Assange has been subject to a coordinated smear campaign. It argues that the 2010 rape allegations against Assange by two Swedish women were “trumped up” – although given that we only hear one side of the argument, it is impossible for viewers to come to any informed conclusion on a complex case. (Assange was never formally charged and the investigation was closed in 2019.)
