I felt driven to respond to the letter from Ms Farlow (October 23). Julian Assange did not put any lives at risk, as stated by Ms Farlow. This is precisely why the US government could NOT provide any evidence of this in several UK court cases in an attempt to extradite Julian. In fact ‘ironically’ it was the US government who often put civilian lives at risk. It was Mr Assange who revealed these war crimes at unimaginable risk to himself. Julian was accused many times of not redacting names (e.g.in the Afghan war logs) – in order to protect informants.
Fact is, Julian did redact names within thousands of documents and I believe employed many people to do this. He had a genuine commitment to reveal the truth, which we all as citizens of the world had a right to know.
Chelsea Manning first approached many news outlets and no one would touch these dynamite government documents, only Wikileaks agreed. However, many journalists around the world, including the NY Times and The Guardian etc did finally publish Wikileaks documents which benefited their expanding careers, while Julian rotted in jail. May I add there was no reason at all to place Julian in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, except for the purpose of revenge and a huge red flag to others, not to attempt the same brave acts.
I do acknowledge that the release of documents impacting upon Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2018, was probably not wise, but don’t know if Ms Farlow was concerned about this? Wikileaks was also committed to not withholding any information, except that which would endanger informants’ lives. Nevertheless, nothing justified the torture Julian endured for seven years in Belmarsh prison. Finally, when Julian received the prestigious Walkley Award in 2011 most of the people in the room applauded and I certainly would have been one of them if I was present. We must never underestimate the global importance of whistleblowers, never, ever.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
