Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has welcomed U.S. President’s response to Australian requests to drop the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
The U.S. is seeking to extradite the 52-year-old Australian from the U.K on espionage charges over the release of military and confidential documents.
On April 10, when asked about Australia’s appeal for Mr. Assange’s release, the U.S. President said: “We’re considering it.”
Mr. Albanese described this as “an encouraging statement from President Biden.”
“We have raised, on behalf of Mr. Assange, Australia’s national interest that enough is enough and this needs to be brought to a conclusion,” he told ABC TV on April 11.
“We’ve raised it at the level of government, in every possible way.”
The Australian PM reiterated Australia’s diplomatic efforts “in order to achieve an outcome that I believe Australians want to see.”
In February, Mr. Albanese voted in favour of a motion, introduced by Independent MP Andrew Wilkie in the federal parliament’s lower house, calling for the return of Mr. Assange to his home country Australia.
“Mr. Assange has already paid a significant price and enough is enough, there’s nothing to be gained by Mr. Assange’s continued incarceration,” Mr. Albanese said at the time.
U.S. prosecutors want to try Mr. Assange on 18 counts, mainly under the Espionage Act, over WikiLeaks’ release in 2010 of confidential US military records and diplomatic cables.
If extradited, the charges could amount to a sentence of 175 years in a maximum-security prison.
The UK High Court said in March that the U.S. must provide assurances that Mr. Assange will not face the death penalty. The court will evaluate the U.S. authorities’ response at the end of May.
In a post on X (formally Twitter), Mr. Assange’s wife Stella said: “Do the right thing. Drop the charges.”
Meanwhile, the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance has written to Mr. Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong urging them to publicly call upon the U.S. government to drop its charges against the WikiLeaks’ founder.
This letter on April 11 coincides with the fifth anniversary of Assange’s detention in the UK.
“We are writing to urge you in the strongest possible terms to take immediate public action to demand the United States government drop the charges against Julian Assange so he can resume life as a free man in Australia,” said the Alliance’s Federal President Karen Percy.
Mr. Assange established the Wikileaks website in 2006. It was reported to have published more than 10 million documents related to war, spying, and corruption.
The U.S. Department of Justice described the leaks as “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.”
It also published thousands of confidential files provided by former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who was jailed for 35 years before having her sentence reduced by former President Barack Obama in 2017.
Former President Donald Trump, challenging President Biden in the 2024 race, has said that Mr. Assange “has been treated very badly.” He has not said whether he would drop the prosecution if he wins another term.
