Hope for Resolution of Long-Running Assange Case
US appears to be softening on their previous uncompromising position
Just two weeks after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly disparaged any possibility of resolving the Australian journalist and Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange extradition to the US from Britain to face espionage charges, the US Ambassador to Australia, Caroline Kennady has publicly indicated there could be a resolution to the case.
Assange is in solitary confinement in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison, awaiting extradition to the US on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse over the Wikileaks publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents and other materials in 2010.
The Guardian, New York Times, Le Monde, El Pais, and Der Spiegel, which jointly published the documents were never charged. US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning stole the classified diplomatic documents and military files that Wikileaks later published. Manning was given more lenient treatment when former US President Barack Obama commuted her 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her to be released in 2017.
Julian Assange has spent the last five years in Belmarsh, and seven before that inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, out of fear of what is actually happening to him today. Obama declined to prosecute Assange due to the implications it would have on the prosecution of other journalists for espionage. However, the Trump administration issued an indictment in 2019 which has been continued until now by the Biden administration.
It has been since disclosed that the CIA through a Spanish contractor spied on Assange while in the Ecuadorian Embassy, and under the former head of the CIA, Mike Pompeo plans were actually made to assassinate Assange.
The US has until now resisted backroom Australian persuasion and requests to resolve the case. The softening US position appears to be in response to the step-up in UK and UK access to Australian military facilities under the AUKUS agreement.
Blinken said in Brisbane that Assange has been charged with serious criminal conduct and risked great harm to US national security. On this, Blinken asked that Australia see the US perspective on this case. However, this put Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong under immense pressure from their own Australian Labor Party rank and file.
Blinken’s statements led to criticisms of Albanese and Wong by MPs Julian Hill, Andrew Wilke, and Bridget Archer. With the ALP National Conference on in the coming week, the Assange issue is one that Albanese and Wong would like to avoid.Â
Pre-empting resistance to the idea of any plea-deal, Julian Hill said no one would think any less of Assange if he struck a plea deal. Fortunately, the US State Department appears to be astute enough to see that the Assange issue could potentially become a major thorn in the US-Australian partnership, leading to the comments made by the US envoy recently that there could be some form of David Hicks type plea-deal done with the US Justice Department, to see Assange on his way home to Australia.
This might involve a downgrading of charges against Assange in return for a guilty plea and a short prison term that could be served in an Australian prison.
The Assange exit plan from the US point of view needs to be in a face-saving manner, where this episode can be passed by as quickly as possible. Thus, the David Hicks approach may be most acceptable, where Hicks, an Australian, attended al-Qaeda's Al Farouq training camp in Afghanistan, and met with Osama bin Laden in 2001. He was detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp from 2002 until 2007 and was not allowed to speak publicly for a number of years after his release after spending some time in an Australian prison.
Albanese is scheduled to travel to Washington to meet with President Biden in October. There is now a sign that a compromise could be agreed and announced, which would reflect positively upon Albanese, with the trappings of the White House in the background. This would still mean Assange would have to travel to the US for a court hearing, but sometime after a plea-deal in court, he would be on his way back to Australia.
Australia’s ambassador to the United States, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, echoed Penny Wong’s sentiment that the pursuit of Assange ‘had gone on too long’. Rudd went on to talk up Albanese’s involvement and advocation for Assange’s release, since coming to office in 2022. With the rise in US Congressional support to drop the charges against Assange, it is potentially a good opportunity for the Biden administration to put closure to the case.
Currently, evidence is only circumstantial, but looks promising. Any plea-deal and future release of Assange will not be a victory for free speech, but rather a convenient deal between the Australian and US governments to get the matter off the table.
Originally published in Asia Sentinel 15th August 2023.
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Anwar Ibrahim should be very vocal about Assange's freedom.
It should get Anwar on the right side of history, and turn him into an international figure immediately.
A good piece of effort on Assange would help with Anwar's legacy. Considering he has got nowhere in politics for an eternity.
If you ever watched the defining documentary about Assange by former SBS reporter/ presenter Mark Davis you'll know what many knew before that documentary about Julian Assange.
Julian Assange built a cult around himself and embellished his stories about his hacking conquests and exploits by borrowing the terminology and making copious reference to the technical terms used by real hackers in his many interviews, online and during various conferences and seminars.
He could not hack pussy even if it were handed to him on a silver platter. He managed to worm himself into the fringe in the UK and Europe who hacked into websites and learnt from them some of the techniques they used. No hacker in their right mind whatever their cause wanted to identify themselves publicly with the commission of serious crimes like hacking. But Assange did. So he became the voice of other hackers. A cause celebre sans tthe cause..
He chanced upon that poor confused military sergeant of the US army Bradley Manning and recruited that poor fellow into his circle publishing Mannings leaks making himself (Assange) famous at Manning's expense.
The US may be bad but they are not stupid. In order to get to the sources of the leaks, the CIA allowed Assange access to the media and fed his vanity to his hollow fame till the trail led to Manning who was the leak they wanted to plug. There was no real hack there. Assange is no Snowden.
He is a complete idiot like all Aussies like Geoffrey Robertson and Richard Nevillee who brown nosed themselves into fame in the UK and became demi gods at home. They were a novelty in the UK at the time. All of them made claim to some sort of seminal event in the UK in the sixties and seventies which they attributed to themselves and their intellectual efforts. Very few that could be quantified.
Assange was always a braggart of no real value. By capturing him using a honey pot trap in Sweden the US was able to milk him for information whiilst he was in jail. A cult built up around him and the rest as they say is history.