A lot of people wanted him punished, including Stratfor, the defense intelligence vendor:
While publicly underplaying the significance of WikiLeaks activity in combating government secrecy, senior execs and analysts at private US intelligence firm Stratfor privately described WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as a “terrorist” and “delusion nut” who “needs to be water-boarded” and made to “move from country to country” for the “next 25 years,” Stratfor leaked emails recently released by WikiLeaks and obtained by Al-Akhbar show.
The emails, part of over five million ones to be released, also suggest that senior Stratfor staff were apparently aware of secret charges reportedly by the US government to indict Assange and didn’t mind using “trumped up” charges to lock up the whistle blower well before WikiLeaks had gone after Stratfor. Assange is currently fighting an extradition to Sweden from the United Kingdom in relation to a sexual assault investigation involving two Swedish women that was ordered by the Swedish courts on 18 November 2010.
Most of the Stratfor email exchanges dealing with WikiLeaks and Assange are between mid-2010 to mid-2011.
Assange’s treason is all about leaking to us what our government is pretty much known to be doing all over the world.