His father [John Shipton] was in Italy recently. He received an honourary card by the Order of Italian Professional Journalists in Rome on behalf of Assange … I spoke to him and he was devastated. He told me Julian is dangerously thin.

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Maurizi: I do not have any access to him, and so far, the visits are only allowed for the legal team, for his family members, but not for me and other journalists.

The last time I met him was November 2018, five months before he was arrested. I found him in a very serious condition. He was heavily burdened … he had lost maybe 15 kg (33lb). But he was still lucid. He told me he would be arrested and extradited.

Al Jazeera: At one point in your book, you recall being worried when travelling from Berlin to Rome having just worked with WikiLeaks. You had with you a small section of the Afghan war logs. Have you ever felt fearful about your involvement?

Maurizi: I never feared for my life. If you take my country Italy, for example, we have dozens of journalists who live under protection due to Mafia threats. They kill journalists because they have no other tools other than violence.

But yes … I have been followed aggressively, and it is not a nice thing to experience, especially when you are abroad and alone. I have been physically attacked (Editors’s note: Maurizi writes in her book that she was once robbed in Rome) and have had very important documents stolen which never surfaced again.

Al Jazeera: You claim that WikiLeaks has “radically transformed journalism”? How so?

Maurizi: First of all, they made these documents accessible and provided a reasonably secure platform for whistleblowers who wanted to leak, because one of the problems is that in traditional media, people still use old-fashioned technologies like mobile phones and emails, which are totally vulnerable.

Also, they made these documents available to billions.

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They [WikiLeaks] don’t just publish revelations, like national security journalists, they make the actual documentation available to everyone, so that anyone can make up their own mind.

This is not just a revolution in journalism, but a revolution in the access available for [everyday citizens] to important information. You have to be able to access this information in order to have proper democratic participation in public life.

Al Jazeera: Assange’s critics are vocal. They call him a “hacktivist” and say the work of WikiLeaks is far from journalism. What do you make of these characterisations?

Maurizi: It’s completely false. He is clearly a journalist, and we cannot allow the state to decide who is and who is not a journalist.

Of course, the US government has tried to undermine these journalistic protections, because they know that as long as he has journalistic protections, it will be very hard for them to charge him. And that’s why the US government is pressing the argument that he is not a journalist, but maybe a hacker or activist.

So what the United States is doing is using a fear tactic. They are just trying to bypass the press protection. This is indeed what [Benito] Mussolini did in Italy. Mussolini created the system in which the state decided who is a journalist and who is not, in order to control the press.

Al Jazeera: The US government and some observers accuse Assange of recklessness, claiming leaks could lead to attacks.

Maurizi: These documents were published in 2010. Twelve years later, the US authorities cannot name a single person who has been killed, who has been injured, who has been put in prison as a result.

Immediately after Julian Assange started and WikiLeaks started publishing the Afghan war logs, the state department, the Pentagon, the CIA, created this huge task force to check whether anyone had been injured, to check the names which have been published, and after 12 years, they haven’t been able to provide a single example.

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Maurizi: The aggressive persecution and prosecution of people like Assange and Manning send a message to whistleblowers and journalists that you have to be very careful because if you go ahead with this … your life will be destroyed.

On the other hand, it is quite encouraging that after Chelsea Manning, we had Edward Snowden. And after him, we had whistleblowers like Reality Winner and Daniel Hale.

So, we still have people who listen to their conscience and go ahead, so I’m still optimistic. That’s why I absolutely want Assange to win his case. I’m convinced that if he does, this will be a big step towards a society in which you can reveal state criminality at the highest level and be free and safe.