The government is working with the WikiLeaks co-founder, who is set to enter a plea in a US court, Anthony Albanese has told MPs.
The Australian government wants Julian Assange to return home, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said, after he was granted bail by the UK ahead of an expected guilty plea in a US court, part of a deal that should see him walk free.
The co-founder of the transparency organization WikiLeaks was allowed to leave Belmarsh high security prison on Monday, where he spent over 1,900 days, and depart from British soil. On Wednesday, he is expected to attend a court hearing on Saipan, part of the US territory of Northern Mariana Islands, where a US judge will presumably approve an agreement he made with prosecutors.
Discussing the news with MPs, Albanese reiterated that “there is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia.”
Senior Australian officials, including High Commissioner to the UK Stephen Smith and Ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd assisted in securing his release and are accompanying Assange, he added.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong told parliament that in the early years of his predicament in the UK, Assange refused Australian consular visits, but last year agreed to engage the government. Smith had met with him on several occasions since, she said.
The plane believed to be carrying Assange has arrived in Thailand and landed at Don Mueang International Airport north of Bangkok to refuel and resupply, according to local officials. It is expected to proceed to Saipan.
The Commonwealth of Northern Marianas is a US territory. The location was chosen by the Assange defense team due to it being distant from the continental US and its proximity to Australia, the media reported citing court papers.
Assange will reportedly plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose US national defense information in exchange for being sentenced to time he has spent in UK custody.
The publisher was facing an effective life sentence in the US under charges which relate to WikiLeaks cooperation with whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Assange’s supporters call him a victim of persecution, who was targeted for exposing the criminality of the US and its allies, including by releasing documents obtained through Manning.
The publisher skipped bail in a separate case and sought asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012. That same year, he hosted the World Tomorrow program on RT. British officials were allowed to enter the diplomatic compound and arrest Assange in 2019, months after a secret US indictment against him was revealed by mistake.
I am ashamed of the United States of America. Who prosecutes people for whistleblowing? The United States of America is behaving like a banana republic. Who fiddles with post in election papers? Who’s government shoots their own president in the face because he wants to take back control of the money supply from the Federation? Who mows down perfectly good farms, so they can control the food supply. Who attacks Russia’s mainland for defending their own land? Who blows up an underwater gas line for supplying much-needed fuel for Germany? Just look at the line of pup tents lining the streets of their major cities. Who prosecute a former president for nothing crime so he may not become a president? Who develops poisonous vaccines to reduce the number of people on the planet? Who pushes Russia, so much that Russia parks nuclear armed vessels of the coast of Cuba? Who lazers and burns their own nation? Twice!
1) The US military killed innocent people. Assange’s crime was that he dared to report on it (like actual journalists are supposed to do, instead of just always carrying the establishment’s water).
2) BRADLEY Manning was the co-conspirator’s name (not whatever zee calls zemselves zeezedays)
3) Sincerely doubt that in all that time Australia had to beg Assange to let them help him, that HE was the one refusing THEIR requests. Please.
4) The “seperate charge” was a contrived rape story (and textbook deep state go-to accusation we’ve seen a million times), that was the pretext for his first seven years of incarceration but was later dropped because everyone already knew what it was REALLY about.
5) The damage he did to international warmonger and cringe queen Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and his leaking of John Podesta’s satanic, paedophillic emails and his assistance in getting Donald Trump elected were by far the things they were most miffed about when they decided to finally move on him in 2019/2020.
No Albo there was nothing to be gained by his incarceration, “ever”. You don’t lock up journalists for doing their job. Oh and while we are on the subject, what about David McBride? Seems Australia isn’t exactly kind to whistle blowers, is it, old son?
If I were Assange I’d be on the next flight to Moscow. At least they respect journalism and human rights…….