Julian Assange and Vault 7

Read: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/chris-hedges-crucifixion-julian-assange

 Julian Assange is in the news again.  I don't understand either side's position.  Julian Assange is an Australian citizen who was living in London, running WikiLeaks.  He has gone to extreme measures to fight extradition, which has been pending since November 2010, first to Sweden for alleged rape charges, and then since December 2017, to the United States.  He hid out in the Ecuadorian embassy from 2012 to 2019.   He was arrested on 11 April 2019, and has been in Belmarsh Prison ever since.  I don't understand why he doesn't just consent to extradition, and fight the charges in US courts, and then he could appeal his conviction there, if necessary.  If he wants to be a martyr for free speech then he would be much more sympathetic if he were actually persecuted and suffering in a prison in the US.

On the other hand, the attorneys for the US won't provide assurance that he won't face the death penalty.  Really, why so extreme?  Maybe it is because he leaked some hacking tools used by the CIA.

The 26 September [2021] Yahoo report alleges the following amongst other matters. The disclosure by WikiLeaks of exceptionally sensitive intelligence, relating to CIA hacking tools and known as “Vault 7”, caused the CIA director, Mike Pompeo, and other senior officials inside the CIA, to become “completely detached from reality because they were so embarrassed… They were seeing blood.” In 2017, Mr Pompeo publicly described WikiLeaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service.” The designation as a non-state hostile intelligence service enabled the CIA to take far more aggressive actions. Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration discussed killing the applicant, requesting options on how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing the applicant occurred “at the highest levels”.

https://www.tareqhaddad.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/24.03.26-Assange-v-USA-Approved-Judgment.pdf , page 23.

What is Vault 7?  It is information about the CIA's covert hacking program.  WikiLeaks didn't spread the actual programs (malware, viruses, trojans, etc) or their source code, just information about their existence.  https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/

Does leaking information about CIA's hacking tools justify the death penalty?

I don't have a conclusion.