There can be no doubt this man has made many enemies over his lifetime. Many powerful ones.
It is premature to suggest that his sexual assault allegations are "trumped up". Those sorts of allegations are serious and have to be investigated. The fact that he has turned himself in suggests that he's happy to face them down and protest his innocence.
Beyond those allegations, is Julian Assange guilty of any crime?
The answer, of course, should be no.
Anyone in the Australian public service who leaked such information be guilty of treason. At best, they would be protected under whistleblower legislation if the documents they leaked exposed gross corruption or negligence.
Julian Assange is neither a whistleblower, nor someone guilty of treason. He is not employed by any government. His organisation basically runs a "drop box" for people to provide leaks to, anonymously if necessary. He then publishes them on his website.
His organisation is basically a media organisation that reports the facts by publishing the documents. In the past, leaked documents would be handed to newspapers, who would then report on the story. Today, the documents themselves are freely accessable by anyone. What's the difference? the public still gets the information. In fact now, it's easier than ever. Which is probably the point, as far as many governments are concerned. It's too easy now. And governments don't trust Julian Assange to self-censor stuff that could be potentially explosive.
Assange is no more guilty of reporting sensitive information than the news organisations that have repeated his scoops worldwide. And many of his scoops have been substantial, from leaks of diplomatic cables on afghanistan, evidence of war crimes in iraq, evidence of corporate crime, and other juicy diplomatic cables like Saudi Arabia wanting to attack Iran, and Sweden being a secret member of NATO.
Julian Assange is guilty of nothing more than exposing the world's dirty laundry. For this we should thank him. If he is indeed guilty of sexual assault, he deserves to be punished.
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