Anthony Albanese first on the phone as convicted felon Julian Assange tastes freedom at last
Australia’s highest profile fugitive Julian Assange has returned home a convicted felon, reuniting with his wife and father after five years in prison and more than a decade on the run.
Australia’s highest profile fugitive Julian Assange has returned home a convicted felon, reuniting with his wife and father after five years in prison and more than a decade on the run from US authorities over his publication of troves of top secret documents.
He disembarked from a charter flight from Saipan in the western Pacific at about 7.55pm on Wednesday, raising a fist as he walked across the tarmac at Canberra’s RAAF Fairbairn terminal.
He embraced wife Stella Assange on the tarmac, lifting her off the ground before hugging his father John Shipton amid cheers from supporters.
Moments after his arrival, Anthony Albanese declared: “We have got this done.” The Prime Minister revealed he was the first person Assange spoke to after he touched down. According to one of the WikiLeaks founder’s lawyers, Assange told Mr Albanese he had “saved his life”.
Mr Albanese claimed credit for Assange’s release, saying his government was focused on “making a difference”.
“This is what standing up for Australians around the world looks like,” he said. “It means getting the job done; getting results and getting outcomes; having the determination to stay the course.”
But the Prime Minister declined in an evening press conference to say whether he believed Assange was a journalist – as the WikiLeaks founder claims – who was wrongfully pursued by the US over his disclosure of hundreds of thousands of classified documents. “There will continue to be different views about Julian Assange and his activity,” Mr Albanese said. “My role as Prime Minister has been to firmly say that whatever the views that people have, there was no purpose to be served by this ongoing incarceration.”
Ms Assange said after her husband’s arrival that freedom of speech was “in a very dangerous place”, and there needed to be a conscious pushback against efforts to stifle reporting.
“Julian needs time to recover, to get used to freedoms,” she said, saying she wanted her husband to “have that space to rediscover freedom slowly”.
Assange’s return to Australia followed his guilty plea in the US District Court in Saipan to a single count of conspiring to obtain and distribute classified information under the US Espionage Act. But he stood defiantly by his claim to have acted as a journalist in dumping the files on the internet.
“Working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide material that was said to be classified,” the 52-year-old told the court. “I believe the first amendment and the Espionage Act are in contradiction with each other, but I accept that it would be difficult to win such a case given all these circumstances.“
Assange’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, said the conviction was a “chilling” precedent, arguing the US Espionage Act should never have been used to pursue a publisher or journalist such as Assange. “Mr Assange revealed truthful, newsworthy information, including revealing that the United States had committed war crimes,” he said. “He has suffered tremendously in his fight for free speech, for freedom of the press, and to ensure that the American public and the world community gets truthful and important newsworthy information.”
But the US Justice Department said Assange’s guilty plea was an admission of a conspiracy with former US soldier Chelsea Manning – who served seven years in jail – to release top-secret information without caring about the harm it would cause. “After obtaining classified national defence information from Manning, and aware of the harm that dissemination of such national defence information would cause, Assange disclosed this information on WikiLeaks,” it said.
Under the terms of his plea deal, Assange is barred from travelling to the US. He was also required to “take all action within his control” to return or destroy any unpublished classified documents in his possession, or held by WikiLeaks.
Ms Assange, who said her husband would seek a pardon, launched a funding drive to raise about $778,000 to cover the cost of the chartered jet that brought her husband home, already reaching $629,518 late on Wednesday.
District Court judge Ramona Manglona said the 62 months Assange had already served in a British prison “was fair and reasonable and proportionate to Manning’s actual prison time”.
Assange was accompanied in court, and on the flight to Australia, by Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, and high commissioner to the UK, Stephen Smith. Mr Albanese paid tribute to the efforts of both men in lobbying for Assange’s freedom. US ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy thanked Australia for its co-operation, saying Assange’s return “brings this longstanding and difficult case to a close”.
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie said Mr Assange’s release was “thrilling news”, but his conviction set an “alarming” precedent.
“It’s the sort of thing we’d expect in an authoritarian or totalitarian country, it is not what we would expect from the US or a similar country like Australia,” he said. “Julian Assange is a Walkley award-winning Australian journalist who did his job.”
Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said Mr Assange was “no hero”, and had drawn out the resolution of his own case by “evading lawful extradition requests”. “It is a credit to the US that they are showing such leniency towards someone accused of such a serious crime,” Senator Paterson said.
Former Home Affairs Department secretary Mike Pezzullo said it would be “deeply troubling” if Assange was given “celebrity status”, arguing it would be inappropriate for senior government figures to personally welcome him home. “He shouldn’t be treated as a hero, but he is an Australian citizen who was deserving of consulate support,” he told Sky News.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Assange’s freedom was the result of “careful, patient and determined efforts”, comparing his release with the government’s success in securing the freedom of Cheng Lei from a Chinese prison, and Sean Turnell from detention in Myanmar. “The approach we have taken is to pursue outcomes. We haven’t taken the approach of seeking headlines,” she said.
A group of more than a dozen MPs who supported Assange gathered in Parliament House on Wednesday. Among them were Mr Wilkie, Labor MPs including long-term supporter Josh Wilson, Liberal MP Bridget Archer, Nationals senator Matt Canavan, and Greens senators Peter Whish-Wilson and David Shoebridge.
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