Time to act Anthony Albanese, the Assange persecution cannot be allowed to go on!

The decision last week by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel to approve the extradition to the US of Australian citizen and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is not surprising. Ms Patel has swallowed the “assurances” of lawyers acting for the US that Assange would get a fair trial in an Eastern Virginia court on charges relating to his publication over ten years ago of shocking revelations about the war crimes perpetrated by the US and its allies in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

But Ms Patel’s decision drives home the need for the Albanese government to roll up its sleeves and ensure this Australian citizen does not face an effective death penalty of over 170 years in an US prison.

Unlike his Labor predecessor, Julia Gillard, and subsequent Liberal Prime Ministers, Mr Albanese has rightly expressed genuine concern over the treatment of Assange. He is on the record, on a number of occasions as saying that he does “not see what purpose is served by the ongoing pursuit of Mr Assange” and, as importantly, “enough is enough”. In a statement released by Foreign Minister Penny Wong on Friday night in response to the Patel decision, she also repeated the Prime Minister’s words.

More recently, in the context of a recent media conference, Mr Albanese indicated the Assange case was not one to be pursued by megaphone diplomacy. An interesting comment implying he is prepared to speak with US President Joe Biden about the matter, but behind closed doors.

The change in rhetoric and the sense that the Australian government might actually work assiduously to ensure that Assange, languishing with declining health in the notoriously harsh Belmarsh prison outside of London, is released and allowed to re-join his family, is welcome development. Many would like to see Mr Albanese dial the White House today, but it is important to get the approach right before that conversation, or conversations, are had.

The Assange case will drag on in the UK courts now given the inevitability of appeals against the Patel decision and a cross appeal against rulings in the original extradition case in 2021. Meanwhile, the threat to freedom of the press and the rule of law which this case poses, remains potent.

Eminent Australian journalists such as the former Financial Times and Fairfax foreign correspondent Tony Walker, the ABC’s Kerry O’Brien and Andrew Fowler, and the former SBS’ presenter Mary Kostakidis have all been warning about how serious a threat to journalists and publishers this case really is.

https://michaelwest.com.au/time-to-act-anthony-albanese-the-assange-persecution-cannot-be-allowed-to-go-on/