Stella Moris stands in front of a statue of a man in Geneva in November 2021, saying “I want to tell you that the name Julian is not the name of a man but the name of a hero, but he suffers”.

This scene opens a new documentary which has already started to be shown in various settings and theatres around the world – it is also being shown on ABC television in two parts – which has the very eloquent and inventive title Ithaka. A hopeful choice of title since the struggle of this man and those around him, is exactly this: to be back in his own Ithaca.

The name that lawyer (and wife) Stella Moris was talking about was none other than that of Julian Assange, the activist who has been persecuted since 2010 and is currently being held in Belmarsh Prison in Britain, and for whom the United States is eager to find a place for him in one of its courts. A 175-year sentence could await him in one of its high-security prisons.

Assange’s crime – if it can be described as such – is that through the Wikileaks website that he created in 2006, he shook governments and businesses around the world when he published secret documents and audiovisual material that revealed the action of leaders, governments and high-ranking officials that, Assange and his supporters argue, constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Already, some have described him as one of the most controversial figures of our time, but his supporters consider him a fighter and advocate for press freedom.

Julian Assange has been targeted by many for those revelations. Yet after his “expulsion” from the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he had taken refuge for seven years, he finally stood before a British court for a very different reason: he was accused of committing rape in Sweden. Only history will show if he really committed this crime or whether it was all part of a well-constructed plot against him.

The documentary Ithaka follows and narrates Assange and his supporters’ struggle against US efforts to obtain his extradition from Britain, to face charges of espionage against the USA. The charges against him were made known in 2010 when US military files were leaked in connection to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – primarily the responsibility of former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. However, because these dossiers were also published on Wikileaks (and by major newspapers, such as The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel), only Assange faces prosecution.

The main character in the documentary is John Shipton, Assange’s father, now 76, who is a retired builder. Mr Shipton has embarked on a titanic fight to save his son from extradition to the US.

The other important character in Ithaka is Stella Moris who met Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in 2015 as a member of his advocacy team. They were married in Belmarsh Prison and already have two children together.

On January 4, 2022, a London court rejected Assange’s extradition to the United States, a decision that predictably caused euphoria and relief for Assange’s family and supporters – momentarily of course. The main reason for the British decision was that inhuman prison conditions awaited him were he to be extradited to the US. This decision provided a serious humanitarian element to the whole affair, particularly since Assange has been diagnosed with a form of autism.

The US is in the process of appealing last January’s decision. Three of the five arguments put forward have already been accepted by the British judges. At the first hearing, Britain’s Supreme Court considered the last two arguments. The irony is that the judges of the Court of Appeals accepted the US appeal only a few days after the revelation by the main prosecution witness, the Icelandic Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, that his accusations against Assange were false and that he had been promised money.

After Barack Obama and Donald Trump, Joe Biden is the third US president to ignore calls for a halt to the trial. If Assange is to be considered a journalist his plight sets a disturbing precedent for investigative journalists who uncover abuses of power and of human rights.

Dictators and authoritarian regimes are closely monitoring the US and British attitudes towards Assange and others like him. The outcome may give them the opportunity to accuse the West of double standards on press freedom while also giving them free rein to trample their own media.

In any case, the US has full control over the outcome of the case in the Court of Appeals, because it’s subject is the conditions of detention. Americans can give as many guarantees as they want on these conditions. That is why Assange’s team of lawyers appealed against the first instance decision last January, contradicting the reasons for extradition under the espionage law of 1917.

The decision to extradite can take years to be announced, which is in the interests of US and, according to Amnesty International, “the strategy is to keep Assange in prison as long as possible – it’s something like a slow death.”