“Ithaka:” The Battle to Save Julian Assange

Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who revealed evidence of US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq—including the horrific 2007 “collateral murder” video that shows an American Apache helicopter machine-gunning a dozen civilian Iraqis—still sits isolated in London’s ghoulish Belmarsh Prison. If the Biden administration persists in demanding his extradition to the US, he potentially faces 175 years in prison for violating the Espionage Act, very likely spent in one of America’s even more horrific super-max prisons.

Leading the daunting charge against the national security apparatus that wants Assange forever silenced, if not dead, are his father, John Shipton, a 76-year-old retired home builder from Australia, and Stella Moris, his wife and mother of his two young children. Produced by Julian’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, and directed by Ben Lawrence, Ithaka, a newly released documentary, follows the pair’s efforts across the UK, Europe, and the US to rally support for Julian’s case.

A long series of revealing interviews with John and Stella detail the heart-breaking emotional toll they bear as Assange’s case suffers defeat after defeat at the hands of British courts, doubtless buttressed by American security establishment interests. Unaccustomed and uncomfortable, at least at first, with the media spotlight, John throws himself into the breach time and again to argue for his son’s innocence, to highlight the damage Julian’s conviction in the US would do to First Amendment rights of journalists everywhere, and to answer every last question of the audiences who gather to hear him speak.

Filmed over two years, Ithaka concludes with a British court denying Assange bail and the Biden administration insisting on proceeding with extradition demands. So Assange remains in solitary confinement, closeted in his small cell for 23 hours a day. During those two years, John and Gabriel Shipton recorded a video (below) with our local Assange Defense LA group, produced by independent filmmaker Robert Corsini. In the quiet of Robert’s house, John delivered the most profoundly moving appeal imaginable, as in the film revealing his deep resolve to keep the Assange defense battle going despite the many setbacks.

At the time, I pegged him for a retired professor, probably of literature, with the way he kept his audience on the edge of their seats by choosing just the right word each time and moving from one metaphor to the next. But in the film, Shipton straightened me out, saying “I enjoyed building things, particularly liked building homes. A home, you know, is the theatre of life. It gathers its inhabitants under the roof like a hen gathers its chicks. I like that.”

For counterpoint, Nils Meltzer, UN Special Rappoteur on Torture, details the long public narrative of smears and innuendo about Assange that has taken the focus away from what’s really important about the Wikileaks revelations: the war crimes, the deceptions, the corruption. Later, Daniel Ellsberg—who revealed the Pentagon Papers in 1971—underlines the threat to freedom of speech and freedom of the press that the decade-long hounding of Assange has already played in making journalists understand that their number could be next.

Late last year, The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and El País rallied, however tardily, to Assange’s defense, noting that Assange is the first publisher to be charged under the Espionage Act for revealing government secrets, while acknowledging that they collaborated with Wikileaks to publish the same secret documents that Assange has been persecuted for all these years. Assange’s appeal of the order to extradite him to the U.S. is pending in the U.K. High Court. Many think that if Assange is extradited, he will be convicted and sentenced in an especially conservative federal court in eastern Virginia that’s often used for national security cases. Many also fear Assange might commit suicide.

John and Gabriel Shipton are currently on a nationwide tour with Ithaka to galvanize further support for Julian Assange at this critical juncture. The ACLU of Southern California is sponsoring a showing on March 1st in North Hollywood. You won’t be disappointed by John or Gabriel or their film. 

Ithaka: A Fight to Free Julian Assange, special screening with Assange’s father John Shipton and his brother and producer of the film, Gabriel Shipton, with ACLU SoCal Executive Director Hector Villagra and ACLU SoCal Board President Rana Sharif (moderator). March 1, 2023, 7 p.m., Laemmle Noho, 5240 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood, 91601. Get tickets here.