One may look no further than the treatment of Assange's own source for the Afghanistan war logs for clear evidence that "international eyes" do not stop attempts at pre-trial punishment.

The lone member of Obama's State Department who spoke out against that treatment-- P.J. Crowley-- had to resign the next day for doing so.

If you didn't know about any of those events I'd suggest reading up on them before commenting further on the subject.

... and one may look no further than the fact that Chelsea Manning is free now to see that being in the public eye has a significant effect on the outcome, because were she not in the public eye, she'd very much still be in jail for espionage. On account of the espionage, which leaked documents adding fuel to the fire-piles that kindled into the political destabilization of several nations in the Middle East and North Africa and the deaths of thousands of people in civil wars, beginning with Libya.

She got off very easy for the deaths she (unintentionally) facilitated by deciding her conscience spoke more loudly than the expertise of thousands of State Department operatives trained to deal with delicate international political issues.

Not that I’m aware of, however as I said in my last post - I usually take the high road and do what it takes to get the heat off. I usually don’t sit there and start arguing with the cop and antagonize him. Even if I’m in the right. I don’t bend over and follow orders, I resist enough to make the experience unpleasant for them as it is for me, but I have other things in life to do than fight the injustice.

Assange did the opposite. He came out guns blazing. When you do that, the court system often will find a way to bone you. And that doesn’t usually result in repercussions because the system can say “well maybe we were a little wrong but he wasn’t helping his case!”. And tragically that’s often enough for the external watchers to let it go.