and instead jumped bail after the UK courts ruled against him
Assange has regularly claimed the Aussie government won't help him, but in fact they sent representatives to his hearings; and when he repeatedly moaned they had abandoned him, they contacted him to try to set up a meeting, which he declined
Assange's present circumstances result from his alleged conduct in Sweden, his refusal to return there for prosecution, and the upholding by UK courts of Sweden's warrant for his arrest: he managed to turn that into a three ring circus by convincing Ecuador to allow him to hide in their embassy, but the issue is still primarily Swedish and secondarily a matter of UK jurisprudence; Ecuador's actions merely distract from the original question
Assange seems to believe that he can escape Swedish prosecution by dragging additional parties into the case -- say, the United States or Australia -- and so he and his supporters spin conspiratorial fantasies, which they think will offer opportunities for ever-more-complicated narratives, but the factual basis for such narratives is thin indeed. Although Assange and his supporters will cite every mention of Wikileaks during Manning's prosecution as yet more evidence of nefarious US plotting against Assange, Manning's case can scarcely be discussed at all, if there is to be no mention of Wikileaks
So it is not even slightly surprising that when Manning is tried for the largest document dump in US history, his relationship to the Wikileaks will be scrutinized: he delivered the documents to Wikileaks in several large discrete installments, and he discussed the deliveries which someone at Wikileaks who provided him software for the delivery. The scale of the release will have raised all manner of possible concerns, such as whether the Wikileaks releases represented a deliberate distraction, covering some other espionage activity. Other known details, such as the fact that an Assange associate seems to have attempted to sell some of the released material in Russia, have no doubt also raised flags. So in the Manning case, the prosecution may be proceeding (at least in part) on the theory that Manning was not the only one deciding what documents to download and release. I do not know whether such a theory could be supported convincingly by facts
The court-martial is (in any case) trying Manning, not Assange, and the principal question seems to be: whether a soldier, who transfers large numbers of restricted documents to an organization that specializes in highly-publicized large-scale document dumping on the internet, and who has been warned that official enemies (such as al-Qaida or the Taliban) may comb the internet for information, should or should not then be held accountable for the possibility that those official enemies might actually learn about the document dump and obtain usable information from the dumped documents
The outcome of Manning's case cannot affect Assange's prospects, for Assange has not been charged with any crime in the US; if Assange were somehow charged and brought to trial, he would be prosecuted in civilian court under civilian law, not under military regulations in the military justice system; and no verdict of a different court, that Manning had engaged in some conspiracy, could translate directly into the legal conclusion that Assange was guilty of such a conspiracy
The US has already inquired whether Manning's actual releases affected Aussie interests, and the official answer seems to have been negative
So Manning's trial may not involve any Aussie interests, in which case the Aussies need not follow it closely
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