‘Time for Julian to come home’: Stella Assange pleads with PM Anthony Albanese to bring her husband home
The wife of imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has pleaded with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to intervene amid fears the father-of-two could be extradited to the US within days.
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The wife of imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has pleaded with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to urgently intervene in his case amid fears he could be extradited to the US within days.
Stella Assange, the mother of Assange’s two young children, said a decision by the British Courts to send him from London to a military prison in Virginia was imminent.
“It’s critical. It’s really the end game now,” Mrs Assange said.
“Everyone knows that this is absurd.
“It’s time for Julian to come home and Anthony Albanese is the man who can make it happen. He has to make it happen.
“Julian is in a very, very dire situation … (extradition) could happen at any moment. People just can’t sit around and expect Julian to be able to bear this forever.”
“very dire situation”. Picture: Fabrice Coffrini
Asked what she would say if given the chance to talk to the PM, she said: “That Julian’s family needs him.
“The Prime Minister needs to pull out all stops. I know it can be done and that words need to come with actions.
“I am pleading for Julian to be able to come home. There is only so much we as a family can take. It’s so close now and I have a dream that he will be able to come home and the kids will finally be able to spend Christmas together with their father.
“He could be whisked away and taken from us for the rest of his life to some hell hole in the United States prison system – or he could be free, which is what he should be.
“It’s taken a huge toll on all of us.”
Assange, 52, has spent almost five years in a high-security London prison fighting extradition to the US – 13 years after the explosive publication of thousands of top-secret military documents surrounding the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Mr Albanese raised the Assange case with US president Joe Biden during a visit to Washington last month, but the family has accused the PM of failing to make a formal request for his release.
“There are things that are said publicly but privately, behind closed doors, everyone understands how this works,” Mrs Assange said.
“You sit down and you say ‘this situation is untenable. The Australian public won’t tolerate what is being done to Julian and the position of the Australian Government is that he needs to come home’.”
The Assange’s two son’s Gabriel, 6, and Max, 4, were conceived in the Ecuadorean embassy in London while Julian was contesting extradition bids from the United States and Sweden.
Mrs Assange, who has released a series of family photos in a bid to raise awareness of the fight, revealed the couple had discussed plans to raise their young family in Australia.
“We’ve talked about where we would move to in Australia. Julian spent a long time in Melbourne but I think what he would want to do – if he could choose – would be to be closer to where he was when he was around 12 or 13, which was near Byron Bay – but not in an urban environment, closer to nature,” she said.
Asked if her husband had any regrets over the WikiLeaks scandal, she said: “I can’t speak for Julian but he is an incredibly courageous person that did something really important. This is not the price to pay for doing the right thing. This is an enormous wrong that has been done to him.”
Assange has been locked up inside London’s notorious Belmarsh prison since 2019, spending up to 22 hours a day in a cell without sunlight.
“It’s a horrible existence that he has had to deal with for years now,” Mrs Assange said.
“I fear for both his physical and mental health. He’s already in a much weaker state than he was even a year ago. He can’t carry on indefinitely. There has to be a tipping point.”
Assange suffered a mini – stroke in October 2021 and remains on medication.
“He’s at risk of dying because he is in a prison cell in the harshest prison in the United Kingdom where he has been for soon to be five years in conditions that have driven people on his cell block to commit suicide,” she said.
“When you are in bad health in prison, that is a very, very dangerous place to be. He is in a very delicate state of physical health – and is not in safe space for someone in that situation. The risk is high.”
Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton said: “I asked the Australian embassy in Washington if the PM had made a formal request to the US President. They wouldn’t confirm if he had or he hadn’t, which is very telling.
“I understand, we are all scared of getting rejected, but this is our closest ally we’re talking about.”
A coalition of Australian parliamentarians flew to Washington in September to lobby for Assange’s freedom.
Former deputy PM Barnaby Joyce said: “Whatever your views are about Mr Assange, and there are many, there is one underlying truth … Mr Assange is an Australian citizen who never committed a crime in Australia, is not a citizen of the USA and was never in the USA when any alleged US infringements occurred.
“So why are we sending an Australian citizen to a third country? This issue needs to be parked and Mr Assange needs to be brought home.”
Federal MP Andrew Wilkie said: “I don’t doubt that our Prime Minister has plenty of sway with the US President right now.
“In other words Julian’s life is in the PM’s hands because any day he could be shipped from the UK to the US and be lost in American jails until he dies.
“Even Belmarsh prison in London is a hellhole. Indeed during the afternoon I was there visiting Julian, a prisoner murdered another prisoner with a shiv. It’s that kind of place.”
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