US determination to extradite Julian Assange ‘damages’ alliance: Greens

A bipartisan group of MPs and senators, including Barnaby Joyce, are in Washington to press the US to drop charges against the WikiLeaks founder.

Greens senators suggested Australia’s relationship with the US would be “damaged” and Anthony Albanese “embarrassed” if the US did not drop its espionage charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and let him return to Australia from the UK.

Greens senator David Shoebridge, speaking alongside his Senate colleague Peter Whish- Wilson in Washington on Wednesday (Thursday AEST), said “an overwhelming part of the Australian public” wanted Mr Assange to come home.

“When that can’t be delivered from a relationship that is as close as that between Australia and the United States, well, that is embarrassing for the Australian Prime Minister and the Australian government, and it’s damaging to the relationship,” he said.

The senators were part of a bipartisan group of half a dozen parliamentarians, including independent MP Monique Ryan and former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, who are visiting the US capital to press the US government to drop its charges against the Queenslander.

The US has been seeking to extradite Mr Assange, 52, from the UK for years, for alleged crimes under the 1917 Espionage Act related to WikiLeaks’ publication in 2010 of vast troves of classified material related to the Iraq war, which humiliated Washington with embarrassing details about casualties and other internal deliberations.

Mr Joyce, who stressed in his remarks that Mr Assange was not in the US at the time of the alleged crime and had committed no offence under Australian law, said the group had not “come here to pick a fight” but rather to “present a case and to lobby for an outcome”.

“After 11 years, enough is enough,” he added, referring to how long Mr Assange had been in hiding to avoid extradition to the US where he would face up to 175 years in prison.

The sole Labor MP in the delegation, Tony Zappia, said Mr Assange, 52, had been “punished enough”. “The detention should come to an end, the charges against him should be dropped,” he said.

Neither the previous Coalition government nor the Labor government have been able to persuade the US to drop the charges against Mr Assange. Mr Albanese is due to visit Washington in late October to meet President Joe Biden and Assange supporters who might produce a positive outcome.

The group was speaking to reporters outside the US Department of Justice after a day of meetings with senior officials and Republican members of congress Rand Paul and Thomas Massie, who have long supported Mr Assange’s release.

Mr Assange has been imprisoned at Belmarsh in the UK since he was removed from the Ecuadorean embassy in London in April 2019, and is awaiting the result of a series of appeals against his extradition.

A group of American supporters of Mr Assange, mainly older women who said they were Democrats, stood nearby holding placards in support of Mr Assange as a small truck with a “free Assange” sign circulated nearby.

Anne Wilcox said Mr Assange had “suffered enough” and “press freedom was under attack in the US”.

“I think Australia should drive a hard bargain; you are the pointy end of the spear now in terms of China and the Pacific policy, you should say ‘look this is something we want’,” she told The Australian.

Kathy Boylan, 80, urged Australia “not to co-operate any longer with the war policies of the United States, at least until Julian Assange is released”.

The remarks of the delegation, which is due to meet Democrat congress members tomorrow, came a day after Brazilian President Lula da Silva called for Mr Assange’s release in a speech at the UN.

“A journalist like Julian Assange cannot be punished for informing society in a transparent and legitimate way,” the president said in his speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST).