Day 1 EXPOSING CRIMES IS NOT A CRIME

Had Julian Assange been extradited to the US, he would have faced up to 175 years in prison under the Espionage Act for publishing US war crimes, including torture, murder, and other human rights violations. In April 2019, Julian Assange was arrested by London police and imprisoned in the UK's high-security Belmarsh prison until June 24, 2024.

Together with his seven years of asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy and house arrest in London, Assange spent 14 years in detention without the chance of a fair trial to defend his work as an editor and advocate for the public interest. Assange's work since the 1990s has been inspired by the principles of hacker ethics, cypherpunk, and freedom of information. These values are crucial to understanding the logic behind the founding of WikiLeaks, the publication of a vast number of leaks, and the challenge of exposing the unconditional misconduct of people in positions of power. For many decades, political influence and the drive to effect social change have shaped WikiLeaks' work.

This work has inspired many informants and whistleblowers who have fought in the name of accountability and justice to expose crimes committed by state powers or institutions, but have also faced persecution and criminalization—to name just a few: Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Reality Winner, Daniel Hale, and others who will be speaking during the conference.

The Reasons Behind

5:00–7:10 PM

With Stella Assange (human rights lawyer, South Africa/UK/Australia), Sunna Ævarsdóttir (Global Director of Courage International, Israel), Renata Ávila Pinto (lawyer, openness advocate, CEO of the Open Knowledge Foundation, Germany/UK), and Chip Gibbons (journalist, researcher, US)

Moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Founder and Artistic Director, Disruption Network Lab, Italy/Germany)

The reasons behind and broader impact of WikiLeaks' work will be discussed by speakers closely associated with or actively involved in the project:

Stella Assange (human rights lawyer and wife of Julian Assange) and Renata Ávila Pinto (lawyer, digital rights expert, and openness advocate), who were members of the legal team representing Julian Assange and WikiLeaks defended him and fought for his freedom. They will discuss with Sunna Ævarsdóttir, an Icelandic politician, human rights lawyer, and journalist who investigated Assange's imprisonment and conviction and authored a critical 2024 Council of Europe report classifying Julian Assange as a "political prisoner."

Also participating in the panel discussion is Chip Gibbons, a journalist and researcher specializing in the history of FBI political surveillance and the impact of the Espionage Act on press freedom. The discussion will be moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli, founder and director of the Disruption Network Lab in Berlin, as well as a curator and researcher in digital culture, hacktivism, and whistleblowing.

War & Military

8:00–10:00 PM

With Lisa Ling (whistleblower, former Technical Sergeant, US Air Force Drone Surveillance Program, USA), John Kiriakou (former CIA counterterrorism officer, anti-torture whistleblower, USA), John Goetz (investigative journalist, USA/Germany), Jesselyn Radack (Director, Whistleblower & Source Protection at ExposeFacts, USA/France)

Moderated by Michael Sontheimer (historian and journalist, Germany)

The first documents released by WikiLeaks in the “War & Military” section date from September 2007 and concern US military equipment in Afghanistan, the military dictionary, and, in November of the same year, US military equipment in Iraq. At that time, the platform still functioned as a wiki and represented a revolutionary innovation in the field of journalism and press freedom.

The most significant revelations in this area came in 2010, when WikiLeaks released the video “Collateral Murder,” as well as the “Afghan War Logs” and the “Iraq War Logs,” between April and October. The material released by Chelsea Manning included videos of the July 12, 2007, airstrike on Baghdad and the 2009 airstrike on Granai, Afghanistan, 251,287 US diplomatic cables, and 482,832 military reports. Prior to publishing the first 75,000 documents, WikiLeaks provided transcripts to The Guardian, The New York Times, and Der Spiegel, which published reports throughout 2010.


The impact of these releases was felt worldwide, shedding light on the killing and wounding of civilians by coalition forces in an unprecedented way. They exposed war crimes and military misconduct, as well as other sensitive information, including the financing of the Taliban. Having compiled a six-year archive of classified military documents, many media outlets pointed out that the documents bore similarities to the Pentagon Papers, published by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, which served as an inspiration for the work of Julian Assange.


The revelations, which comprised six years' worth of classified military documents, led many media outlets to point out that the documents bore similarities to the Pentagon Papers, published by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, which served as a source of inspiration for the work of Julian Assange.

Later revelations included the Gitmo files (which in 2011 exposed classified documents on all Guantanamo detainees) and the “Detainee Policies,” more than 100 classified or otherwise restricted U.S. Department of Defense documents outlining the rules and procedures for detainees in U.S. military custody and indicating that some prisoners were housed outside the areas accessible to members of the International Committee of the Red Cross. This has been repeatedly denied by the military.

Speakers include whistleblower Lisa Ling, who witnessed firsthand the consequences of U.S. drone programs and targeted killings of civilians after traveling to Afghanistan to assess the impact of her own involvement; John Kiriakou, the first US intelligence official to disclose information about the use of torture techniques by the US intelligence community; John Goetz, who, in collaboration with Der Spiegel, reported on the Afghan War Diaries, the Iraq War Logs, and State Department cables, and addressed the issue of CIA torture at Guantanamo Bay; Jesselyn Radack, who has examined the legal implications of publishing military documents and represents several Air Force whistleblowers, including Brandon Bryant, Cian Westmoreland, Heather Linebaugh, Lisa Ling, as well as John Kiriakou and Thomas Drake.

The discussion will be moderated by Michael Sontheimer, a German journalist and historian who has covered the Assange case since 2010 and played a key role in the publication of the WikiLeaks documents at Der Spiegel in 2012.

(English / With simultaneous German translation)