Daniel Assange Talks About His Dad

By Jerry Smith Mar 31 2011
assangewatch.blogspot.com

Late last year Daniel Assange spoke with Crikey intern Nick Johns-Wickberg about his relationship with his dad, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, what he think about the work his dad is doing and much more.

Daniel revealed that when he was 16, his father asked him join WikiLeaks, which was just starting out at the time. Thinking that WikiLeaks wasn't going to succeed, and not on great terms with his dad, Daniel turned the offer down and said about that decision:

"I never thought he was going to succeed. It was a ridiculous concept, that he was going to actually leak government documents to the entire world.”

Shortly after asking his son to join WikiLeaks, and being turned down, Assange left Australia, and father and son have had no contact since. Daniel said of their relationship and lack of contact:

“It was just a general decline of relations. I was getting into my late teenage years, and single father and teenage son don’t mix particularly well in one house."

“As for him not contacting me following that, it’s probably at least in part an attempt to protect me. If it was known that I was the son and directly involved in some way, there was a likelihood of a direct retaliation, and my father was quite concerned about such things.”

Daniel, who has completed a bachelor of science degree and works for a software design company, said about his father:

“I would say he’s very intelligent and has a lot of the characteristic troubles that are associated with high intelligence. He gets easily frustrated with people who aren’t capable of working up to his level and seeing ideas that he grasps very intuitively.”

“He’s always been interested in political activism in general, but he’s also had a great interest in science and philosophy and the general pursuit of knowledge, and the idea that this knowledge should be available to the entire human race. WikiLeaks is the culmination of all these concepts.”

Daniel spoke about his father not treating him like a kid and said:

“The one thing I found that I appreciated most was that he wouldn’t treat me like a child when it came to intellectual concepts, he would speak to me as though he were really trying to get me to grasp the fullness of an idea. I think that really helped me a lot in realizing the nature of reality.”

Daniel is sure that his father will be found not guilty of the rape accusations, but isn't as sure as some others that the charges are a government set-up and said:

“I wouldn’t say it’s an impossibility, but the general feel of the thing is that, because the women involved actually knew my father directly... that suggests to me that it’s more of a personal matter."

“I haven’t seen any evidence that there was any actual non-consensual sex involved at any point, so it looks to me that it’s just some sort of cultural misunderstanding or general social failure on the part of my father or the women that’s led to the situation."

Assange, who is still under house arrest at Ellingham Hall in Norfolk,UK, has been fighting extradition to Sweden where he has not been charged with anything but is wanted for questioning by the Swedish police about accusations of rape and sexual molestation made against him by Sofia Wilen and Anna Ardin. Assange denies the allegations and says he had consensual sex with the two women.

Daniel said about his father and his work:

“I am very surprised that the governments haven’t actually done what some of the journalists have been recommending, which is to just assassinate him.”

"I think he’s been doing an excellent job."

“His actions as a personal individual and his actions in a grand political sense are completely disconnected things, and they should be considered in that sense.”

Lawyers for Assange have filed an appeal against Judge Howard Riddle's ruling that Assange should be extradited to Sweden because he felt that Assange could get a fair trial in Sweden and that his extradition to Sweden would not violate his human rights.

Assange and his lawyers fear that if he is extradited to Sweden he may then be extradited to the United States, where he could face torture, confinement at Guantanamo Bay, both, or even the death penalty.

Assange angered the United States when WikiLeaks published the leaked embarrassing diplomatic cables, the classified documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the 'Collateral Murder' video.