Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday expressed frustration at continuing efforts by the US to extradite WikiLeaks front-man and Australian citizen Julian Assange.
“There is nothing to be served by his ongoing incarceration,” he said.
Albanese’s comments in an Australian Broadcasting Corp interview appeared to escalate diplomatic pressure on the US to drop the charges against the 51-year-old Assange, who has spent four years in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison fighting extradition to the US.
Photo: AP
Before that, Assange had taken asylum for seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Albanese said Assange’s case had to be examined in terms of whether the time Assange had “effectively served” was in excess of what would be “reasonable” if the allegations against him were proved.
“I just say that enough is enough. There is nothing to be served by his ongoing incarceration,” Albanese said.
“I know it’s frustrating, I share the frustration. I can’t do more than make very clear what my position is, and the US administration is certainly very aware of what the Australian government’s position is,” Albanese added.
Assange has battled in British courts for years to avoid being sent to the US, where he faces 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse that stem from WikiLeaks’ publication of a huge trove of classified documents in 2010.
Prosecutors allege he helped US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk.
To his supporters, Assange is a secrecy-busting journalist who exposed US military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Albanese said there was a “disconnect” between the US treatment of Assange and Manning. Then-US president Barack Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her release in 2017.
Albanese has said he has advocated for Assange in meetings with Biden administration officials.
Yesterday, he declined to say whether he would raise Assange with Biden when Australia hosts the US leader along with leaders of India and Japan in Sydney on May 24.
“The way that diplomacy works … is probably not to forecast the discussions that you will have, or have had with leaders of other nations,” Albanese said. “I’ll engage diplomatically in order to achieve an outcome.”
Albanese said he did not want to get into an argument about whether Assange’s alleged actions were right or wrong.
“I am concerned about Mr Assange’s mental health,” Albanese added.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home