Julian Assange should stay in Britain, says Joyce

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has defended Julian ­Assange’s right to remain in the UK, calling his potential extradition to the US a ‘very bad precedent’.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2019. Picture: AFP

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has defended Julian ­Assange’s right to remain in the UK, calling his potential extradition to the US a “very bad precedent” as the controversial Aus­tralian Wiki­Leaks founder seeks to appeal a ruling by a British court that has cleared the way for him to be tried in America.

Mr Joyce said the US, which has been pursuing Mr Assange for years for publishing thousands of classified military and diplomatic cables related to the Iraq and ­Afghanistan wars, would “never hand over one of their citizens in the form they are asking the UK to hand over one of ours”.

“If he is to be deported, he should be deported to Australia; extradition to a third country is a very bad precedent and poses the question as to what are the limits of a third country’s laws on any Australian who happens to be in the UK,” Mr Joyce told The Australian, speaking from hotel quarantine in Washington after contracting Covid-19.

The British High Court’s overturning of a previous decision – which had prevented Mr Assange from being deported on mental health grounds – on appeal from the US last week has triggered a fresh wave of pressure on the Johnson government from journalists and human rights advocates to stop the 50-year-old whistleblower from Queensland from being sent to the US.

“Free Assange” posters also sprouted up outside the Washington home of US Attorney-General Merrick Garland this week as part of the latest campaign to try to persuade the US government to drop the charges against him.

“Mr Assange never stole the files – Bradley Manning did. Mr Assange did publish them but that was not a crime in Australia at the time. Mr Assange was not in the US,” Mr Joyce said, referring to the former US soldier, now Chelsea Manning, who had helped Mr Assange obtain the files.

Mr Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, arrived in the US last week to lobby US congressional staff for help for Mr Assange, who has been a target of the Obama, Trump and now Biden administrations.

“I wouldn’t think Julian’s final appeal (in the UK) is going to succeed so these politicians will have to take a position,” Mr Shipton told The Australian.

A top human rights lawyer who acted for Edward Snowden, who similarly fell foul of US law for leaking CIA documents in 2013, painted a bleak picture of what awaits Mr Assange if the US government wins its appeal to have him extradited from the UK.

Jesselyn Radack told The Australian Mr Assange would “almost certainly” be convicted if sent to the US, where he would face being jailed in one of two maximum security “communication management units” for up to 175 years.

“To the extent Assange is a suicide risk or is struggling with mental health, it would be putting him in a place where he would be even more vulnerable,” she said.

Ms Radack said the case would be heard in the most “pro-government court in the US” in Virginia, near the Pentagon where the jury would likely be drawn from the government agencies. Mr Assange has already spent about 13 years in detention, including seven years at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he evaded extradition to Sweden for sexual assault charges that were later dropped, and at Belmarsh prison in southeast London since May 2019.

“I feel like Australia been very subservient to the US. I know about Five Eyes and all that, but this is one of their citizens; if you’re not going to flex and stand up for your own citizen, when are you,” Ms Radack said.