I fear for my dear friend, Julian Assange

Not a day passes when I do not think of Julian and his sufferings, and fear for his future life, writes Phillip Adams. Picture: AFP

I was introduced to Julian Assange years before WikiLeaks, when he was just a young computer hacker blowing electric raspberries at the authorities. To borrow from Monty Python, he wasn’t the Messiah, he was just a very naughty boy. Eccentric, yes. Perhaps “on the spectrum”. But I liked him immediately – and a lot.

So when a few years later Julian told me of his idea for WikiLeaks – a “freedom of information” service on a global scale – and asked me to be the Australian representative on its grand sounding International Advisory Board, I was honoured to accept. Though let the record show the Board has never met, either in reality or virtually. Neither has Julian ever sought my advice.

The only consequence for my association with WikiLeaks was the Trump government’s refusal to grant me a visa to the US. But the consequences for Julian? Never-ending incarceration and torture.

I consider Julian a dear friend, and have become friends with his family. Not a day passes when I do not think of him and his sufferings, and fear for his future life – and perhaps his death, too – in a US supermax jail if he’s extradited from London’s Belmarsh.

This Australian citizen has been effectively abandoned by his own government. Since Julia Gillard notoriously echoed the US line on Assange (just as Australian PMs echo the US on most things), every government has failed him.

The conservatives don’t give a damn – and Albanese has asked us to be patient. This is no time for megaphone diplomacy, the current government says. Trust us to obtain his freedom via back channels. From time to time an announcement of his release has seemed imminent, but nothing has come to pass.

Now US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy hints that a plea bargain may be on the table – but few would trust a US government that I believe wants him dead, one way or the other. Since Barack Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, who provided WikiLeaks with the evidence of US war crimes, the White House has been obdurate. Our bestie Biden is no better than Trump.

Many Australians have banded together to fight for Julian, including John Pilger, Yanis Varoufakis, former Foreign Minister Bob Carr and human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson. I backed a petition signed by almost a million. We’ve written books, organised rallies and made documentaries in the campaign to save Julian’s sanity and his life – efforts in which we were joined by his heroic predecessor, the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Recently, various national leaders have called on the US for Julian’s release. No response.

The last time I saw Julian was in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where I feared for his physical and mental health. Back then he listened to my radio program every night – he said it kept him “in touch with Australia”. We sometimes talked on air. But there’s none of that in Belmarsh, where he’s effectively been in solitary confinement for years. Extradition to the US is imminent.

Julian Assange’s “crime” deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. He told the world about US war crimes. Now his personal Doomsday Clock is seconds from midnight.