Who remembers David Hicks?

 Yes, some people will recognise his name. He has almost certainly faded from the memory of most people. They will have nothing more than the vague memory of him as "some guy who got banged up in Gitmo".  

That was the way he was described to me just a moment ago. Hicks was the mercenary who went to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan. He had been a mercenary elsewhere as well. When he finally decided that he was tired of the life he was found at a "bus stop" and taken into custody. He spent time in the prison in Guantanamo Bay and he spent time in prison here. He eventually had a terrorism conviction against him quashed.

It still has to be said that Hicks brought his problems onto himself. I don't know what he is doing now but I doubt he is a happy man.

Assange is not going to be a happy man either. The euphoria he currently feels at his "release" is not going to last. It is all very well for his partner to suggest that he wants privacy right now. That will not last either. He has been in the public eye for years now. He has been too aware of crowds of supporters, people who believe that what he did was right. They will expect him to do more of the same.

We need to be absolutely certain of something. Hicks was no "hero". He was not simply a "mixed up kid". He made a decision to go to war as a mercenary.  He made other decisions. They were bad decisions. I have no idea whether he killed anyone but he fought with a group which is widely condemned.

The one thing he did not do was publish thousands upon thousands of documents and put the lives of many others at risk, the lives of sometimes innocent people. After Assange published the Wikileaks documents I became aware of several things. One was that nobody in a team I had been working with had heard from someone they knew. It is only in the last few days we have become aware that he was taken into custody and has since been executed. The other is that other people I knew of through my own work left their posts or were moved by their own organisations. They were not people I worked with as such but they were key to some of the work which was being done. 

It would be easy to dismiss their departure as "just one of those things" but the reality is that they were named in Wikileaks documents. What is more at least some of them would have been completely innocent of any "wrongdoing" in the eyes of whatever authority was watching over them. Others may not have been but the leaks put the lives of all of them in danger. 

The idea that Assange has done no harm, that he is somehow a "reporter" who has "uncovered war crimes" does not align with reality. I have no doubt some illegal behaviour was uncovered but was that all? There were many more people who were "uncovered" who were simply out there doing their job - and their job was helping others. 

Assange has been convicted of a crime. There should be no pardon. I for one will not be "donating" to pay his legal fees.