‘Was any person killed?’: Barnaby Joyce on why Julian Assange case ‘fell over’

Barnaby Joyce says a crucial decision in 2017 was the moment the case against Julian Assange began to “fall over”.

Shadow veterans’ affairs minister Barnaby Joyce has weighed in on the recent development concerning Julian Assange, which could see the Aussie become a “free man”.

The WikiLeaks founder will return to Australia once a judge signs off on a plea deal with US authorities to bring to a close his years-long legal drama.

Assange was released Monday from a high-security British prison where he had been held for five years while he fought extradition to the United States, which sought to prosecute him for revealing military secrets.

He flew out of London to travel to the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific where he will plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defence information, according to a court document.

A charter plane carrying the 52-year-old landed in Bangkok on Tuesday for a scheduled refuelling stop. From there it was scheduled to fly to Saipan, capital of the US territory where Assange is due in court on Wednesday morning.

Assange’s wife Stella said he would be a “free man” after the judge signs off on the deal, thanking supporters who have campaigned for years for his release.

Mr Joyce said the fact Chelsea Manning, one of the key whistleblowers linked to Assange, was walking free was a sign the case against the Aussie transparency activist was beginning to “fall over”.

Manning walked free from prison in May 2017, after serving nearly seven years of a 35-year sentence. But Assange would have to wait a further seven years to find a way out of prison.

The WikiLeaks founder will return to Australia once a judge signs off on a plea deal with US authorities to bring to a close his years-long legal drama.

“I was very happy to hear that an Australian citizen, who never committed a crime in Australia, was not a citizen of the United States, was never charged in the United Kingdom is coming home,” Mr Joyce told The Project on Tuesday night.

“I’m not here to make a statement about the morality of WikiLeaks. What can I say is, if it was your son or daughter, would you want the legislators in Australia to act on their behalf and to try to get them home?

“Mr Assange has spent five years in solitary confinement, 23 hours a day locked up in a high security prison.”

Joyce said an American admission that nobody was killed as a result of him publishing classified documents and footage was evidence enough he should be brought home.

“Was it Mr Assange who broke in and stole the information? No, it wasn’t. Who did it? Well, Chelsea Manning did it. Is Chelsea Manning in prison or free? Chelsea Manning is walking the street ... so it all starts to fall over.

“I then asked the question: Was any person killed or hurt by the actions of what Mr Assange did? America said no.”

Barnaby Joyce says a crucial decision in 2017 was the moment the case against Julian Assange began to ‘fall over’, as the Aussie now prepares to become a free man.

Assange has widespread support from free-speech and transparency advocates.

But not all Aussies are on team-Julian after the news. Sky News host Sharri Markson labelled Assange an “irresponsible traitor” who risked the lives of Americans.

“To Julian Assange, who is today being celebrated by the unions, the Greens and the teals as a hero journalist,” she said. “When in reality he is an irresponsible traitor who risked the lives of American sources working in high-risk warzones in oppressive regimes.”

Assange is not a US citizen.

His wife said the end of the long legal drama had brought a “whirlwind of emotions”.

“I’m just elated. Frankly, it’s just incredible,” she told BBC radio.

“We weren’t really sure until the last 24 hours that it was actually happening.”

In a post on social media platform X, she urged supporters to monitor her husband’s flight on plane tracking websites and follow the “AssangeJet” hashtag, saying “we need all eyes on his flight in case something goes wrong”.

The court in the Northern Mariana Islands was chosen because of Assange’s unwillingness to go to the continental United States, and because of the territory’s proximity to his native Australia, a court filing said.

Under the deal, Assange is due to return to Australia, where the government said his case had “dragged on for too long” and there was “nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration”.

A tourist looks at a mural of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in Melbourne on June 25, 2024.

The publisher was wanted by Washington for releasing hundreds of thousands of secret US documents from 2010 as head of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

Since then Assange has become a hero to free speech campaigners and a villain to those who thought he endangered US security and intelligence sources.

US authorities wanted to put Assange on trial for divulging military secrets about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was indicted by a US federal grand jury in 2019 on 18 counts stemming from WikiLeaks’ publication of a trove of national security documents.

The United Nations hailed Assange’s release, saying the case had raised “a series of human rights concerns”.

“We welcome the release of Julian Assange from detention in the UK,” UN rights office spokeswoman Liz Throssell told AFP in an email.

Assange’s mother Christine Assange said in a statement carried by Australian media that she was “grateful that my son’s ordeal is finally coming to an end.”

But former US vice president Mike Pence slammed the plea deal on X as a “miscarriage of justice” that “dishonours the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our Armed Forces”.

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said the WikiLeaks revelations had “allowed the international community to understand more facts and truth”.

Originally published as ‘Was any person killed?’: Barnaby Joyce on why Julian Assange case ‘fell over’