Global Courant 2023-05-10 12:54:17
A cross-party delegation of Australian lawmakers said on Tuesday they had met with US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and called on her to drop charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing classified US military documents.
The Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group said it told US Kennedy of the “widespread concern” in Australia over Assange’s continued detention, whom they hope to return to Australia.
Assange is in the middle of a legal battle over his possible extradition to the US over Wikileaks’ 2010 publication of top-secret cables detailing war crimes committed by the US government in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention camps, Iraq and Afghanistan. The material leaked to him by a whistleblower also exposes cases of the CIA engaging in torture and rendition.
Last month marked 13 years since Wikileaks published a video showing the US military shooting civilians in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists.
JULIAN ASSANGE SUPPORTERS MEETING AT JUSTICE DEPT. ON 4-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF DETAINMENT
Australian lawmakers said on Tuesday they met with US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and urged her to drop charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)
The meeting with the US envoy comes nearly a month after the four-year anniversary of Assange’s detention in London. The Australian journalist has been held in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison since he was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy on April 11, 2019 for violating prison conditions. He had applied for asylum at the embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden over allegations that he had raped two women. The investigation into the sexual assault allegations was eventually dropped.
Assange wrote a letter last week ahead of King Charles III’s coronation inviting him to visit Belmarsh Prison.
US President Joe Biden will visit Australia later this month for the Quad leaders summit.
“There are different views of Assange in the Australian community and members of the parliamentary group reflect that diversity of views,” Australian lawmakers said in a statement on Tuesday following a meeting with Kennedy in Canberra. “But what is not up for discussion within the Group is that Mr. Assange is being treated unjustly.”
Assange would face 17 charges of receiving, possessing and passing classified information to the public under the Espionage Act and one charge of alleged conspiracy to commit computer intrusion if extradited to the US, and could be sentenced to as many as 175 years imprisonment. US maximum security prison.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in an interview last week that he was “frustrated” that there is not yet a diplomatic solution to Assange’s continued detention and that he was concerned about the mental health of the Wikileaks founder.
REP. RASHIDA TLAIB CALLS ON HOUSESMEMBER TO DEMAND DOJ TO WITHDRAW CLOTHING AGAINST JULIAN ASSANGE
The Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group said there is “widespread concern” in Australia over Assange’s continued detention. (Getty Images)
“I can do no more than make my position very clear and the US government is certainly very aware of the Australian government’s position,” Albanese said. “Nothing is served by his continued incarceration.”
Last year, the editors and publishers of US and European news outlets who collaborated with Assange to publish excerpts from more than 250,000 documents he obtained in the Cablegate leak — The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País – wrote an open letter calling on the US to end its prosecution of Assange.
The Cablegate documents for which Assange is being prosecuted were leaked to WikiLeaks by then-US soldier Chelsea Manning, who was convicted in 2013 of espionage violations and other crimes.
The Obama administration decided not to charge Assange after Wikileaks published the telegrams in 2010 because it should have done the same with journalists from major news outlets. However, former President Trump’s Justice Department later moved to charge Assange under the Espionage Act, and the Biden administration has continued with its prosecution.
Assange’s case has caught the attention of some lawmakers on Capitol Hill, with Representative Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. The other signatures on the letter are Democratic Representatives Jamaal Bowman, NY; Greg Casar, Texas; Cori Bush, Mo.; Ilhan Omar, Minnesota; Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts; and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, NY
Julian Assange faces up to 175 years in prison if he is extradited to the US (Fox News Digital/Landon Mion)
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Under the Trump administration, the CIA reportedly had plans to assassinate Assange over the release of sensitive agency hacking tools known as “Vault 7,” which the agency said represented “the largest data loss in CIA history,” according to a report. Yahoo report from 2021. The agency held talks “at the highest level” of the government about plans to assassinate Assange in London. At the behest of then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, the agency had also prepared “sketches” and “options.”
The CIA had advanced plans to kidnap and extradite Assange and had made a political decision to charge him, according to the report.
Wikileaks also published internal communications in 2016 between the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The messages revealed the DNC’s attempts to boost Clinton in that year’s Democratic primary.
Reuters contributed to this report.
