Stella Assange begs Anthony Albanese to pressure Americans to drop Julian Assange case

Amid fears of her husband being secretly whisked away to the United States, Stella Assange has urged Anthony Albanese to publicly call for Julian Assange’s immediate release.

Stella Assange at the Foreign Press Association briefing as she calls for Anthony Albanese to publicly declare her husband Julian Assange should be released. Picture: Jacquelin Magnay

Julian Assange’s wife has called on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to “bring it up a notch” and publicly call for the release of the WikiLeaks founder amid fears that the United States government could secretly extradite him across the Atlantic on a military jet.

Stella Assange said that for several years Mr Albanese has been saying the case should be brought to an end, but she said that his language was ambiguous.

In response to a question from The Australian at a Foreign Press Association event in central London on Wednesday Mrs Assange said: “The terms he uses are still quite ambiguous and I would like to see a much clearer statement from the Prime Minister that Julian has to be released.”

She added: “Enough is enough, he’s been saying that for three years, you have to bring that up a notch and of course he has the backing of the Australian people and the Australian public to say it clearly now: that Julian has to be released; he needs to be released now.”

Assange, 52, is currently a remand prisoner in the high security Belmarsh prison on the outskirts of London and is awaiting a decision from the High Court whether he has grounds to launch a further appeal against his extradition to the United States.

The United States wants to try Assange on 17 spy charges and one of computer hacking in relation to hundreds of thousands of documents he released on WikiLeaks in 2010 in relation to the Iraq war, and military documents on the Afghanistan war.

Mrs Assange said if the judges won’t allow any further appeals, the only recourse is for Assange to apply to the European Court of Human Rights for a rarely granted emergency injunction.

Mrs Assange fears that the United States may extradite her husband without warning in secrecy and darkness without any time to act.

In one other case, an extradition from Britain to the United States, the US marshals took the individual within 24 hours.

“They weren’t taken to Heathrow or on a commercial flight, they weren’t where unions could take some kind of action, they were taken onto a US airfield and flown on a military jet to the United States.”

There are more than half a dozen US bases in England including two major air strips at Lakenheath and Mildenhall.

Mrs Assange said: “The show would be on the other end, it would be done in secrecy and darkness. It would be done without any time to react, the kind of show would happen once he was in Virginia in United States custody.”

She is hopeful that the British judges would announce their decision in a courtroom and that she would be given two day’s notice of such an announcement.

She said the US president Joe Biden had the authority to drop the case against her husband.

“He could do that right now’’, adding “I don’t think dropping the case against Julian would anger the voters, it would anger the intelligence community”.

She said that Australia was in a position where it “could push harder” in discussions with the Americans.

“My understanding is it comes up in meetings, but to what extent the prime minister is pushing, I don’t know and of course Australia is an important strategic partner of the United States. It is not in a position of being obsequious, it is a vital partner in the United States relationship in the Indo-Pacific and AUKUS. The Australian government could push harder.”