Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called on the US government to stop prosecuting Wikileaks founder Julian Assange after more than a decade. “Enough is enough,” said Albanese on Wednesday about his compatriot’s case. “It is time for this matter to be brought to a conclusion.” He also made this clear in conversations with US government officials, the Social Democrat emphasized. “My position is clear.”
Assange initially spent years in asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Since 2019, he has been held in a maximum security prison near the British capital. The US is seeking his extradition for publishing about 700,000 confidential documents about US military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan on the Wikileaks website from 2010, including explosive information about killing civilians and abusing prisoners.
The British government decided to extradite Assange. However, the 51-year-old appealed in early July. In the United States, the Australian faces a prison sentence of up to 175 years.
Prime Minister appoints whistleblower Manning
Albanian made it clear that he had little sympathy for Assange’s actions. However, he sees no point in endlessly expanding legal action against him. The Australian head of government referred to the case of US whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who was pardoned in 2017 by then US President Barack Obama. Her 35-year sentence for stealing secrets from the US military was thus reduced to seven years.
This week – krone.at reported – several internationally renowned media houses had appealed to the US government to stop prosecuting Assange. The open letter, signed by Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El Pais, The New York Times and The Guardian and published Monday, says the prosecution is setting a dangerous precedent and threatening to undermine press freedom.
In the US, decades of imprisonment are threatened
The US Justice Department wants to try Assange on espionage charges. He is accused of stealing and publishing classified materials from US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan with whistleblower Chelsea Manning, endangering the lives of US informants. Proponents see Assange as a courageous journalist who exposed war crimes and for whom an example must now be set.
Exactly 12 years ago, the media that wrote the open letter, in collaboration with the Wikileaks platform, published disclosure stories about confidential messages from the US State Department. In 2016, during the US election campaign, Wikileaks released thousands of emails from the Democratic Party that inflicted serious political damage on then Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. US intelligence agencies believe the emails were downloaded by Russian hackers and leaked to Wikileaks to aid Republican nominee Donald Trump. Trump defeated Clinton in the election.
Source: Krone
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