Last chance for Julian Assange?

This week the Australian journalist Julian Assange will find out whether he will be extradited from the United Kingdom to the USA, where he faces 175 years in solitary confinement for his role in revealing the truth about war crimes and the inner workings of empire, or conducting ‘espionage’, as America calls it.

Last week, the House of Representatives in Canberra voted in support of a motion brought by the Tasmanian independent and former military officer Andrew Wilkie, calling for Australia’s allies to bring the matter to a close, so that Julian Assange can return home.

The Australian citizen has already spent five years in Belmarsh prison, a place used to incarcerate mass murderers and terrorists. Before that he lived for seven years inside the tiny Ecuadorian embassy.

His lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, says his mental and physical health is extremely precarious.

Collateral murder

Julian Assange’s crime was to use his organisation Wikileaks to reveal the crimes of others, via the bravery of whistleblowers, most notably via the ‘Collateral Murder’ video, which documented the casual, callous killings of Reuters journalists and those who came to their aid, in Iraq in 2010, by a US military helicopter.

As a result of this work, Wikileaks won a Walkley Award for journalism, with Assange named as the editor of the site.

Chelsea Manning, the US army whistleblower who provided much of the classified material, is now free, and the major media publications that published the resulting stories have continued largely unaffected, but Assange’s case is being used to establish a legal precedent for the alarming idea that journalists doing their jobs anywhere in the world can be forced to face trial in powerful countries they have offended, if that’s in the political interests of the national leaders involved.

Donald Trump publicly claimed to ‘love Wikileaks’ after leaked information damaged his presidential rival Hillary Clinton, but it was his administration that revived the prosecution of Julian Assange using an arcane provision of the 1917 Espionage Act. Since then the Australian has remained in legal limbo, with Joseph Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken continuing to talk about Mr Assange’s ‘very serious criminal conduct’.

Julian Assange has also attracted international supporters, including the legendary Vietnam whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Before his death in 2023, Mr Ellsberg said of Assange, ‘Whatever he is guilty of, I’m guilty of. I identify with him completely. The notion that he is guilty of something that I, the good guy wasn’t, is false.’

Strange bedfellows

Among Australian politicians, a surprisingly diverse group have been campaigning for Julian Assange’s release for some time, including teal independent Monique Ryan, the Nationals’ Barnaby Joyce, Liberal senator Alex Antic, Labor’s Tony Zapia and the Greens’ David Shoebridge.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have also claimed to be active behind the scenes, lobbying US officials.

Mr Albanese said in parliament last week that he supported Mr Wilkie’s motion because it was the right thing to do. ‘Enough is enough,’ he said. ‘It is time for this to be brought to a close.’ But some supporters fear the prime minister’s public statements are too little and too late.

For Peter Dutton and the rest of the opposition in the green chamber, even this was a bridge too far, with 42 of them lining up behind his pathetic statement that the Wilkie motion was somehow ‘interfering’ with the legal processes of other countries. This is not something that has apparently bothered them before.

Eight Coalition MPs (including Barnaby Joyce) made themselves absent for the vote. Page MP Kevin Hogan was present and voted against the Wilkie motion, despite knowing of Julian Assange’s connection with the Northern Rivers, and the publicly expressed strong feelings of many of his constituents, with Mr Assange and his mother having lived in the Lismore area when Julian was a child.

Courageous Tasmanians

The only member of the Coalition to have the moral strength necessary to cross the floor for the vote was Andrew Wilkie’s fellow Tasmanian MP Bridget Archer, who is theoretically still part of the Liberal Party.

In parliament Mrs Archer said, ‘The ongoing prosecution of Mr Assange offends my sense of natural justice, my sense of human dignity and my sense of fairness. He’s an Australian citizen who has endured terrible conditions and has suffered significant mental and physical challenges as a result of his ongoing incarceration, due to the lengthy legal battle.

‘It’s not clear to me that Mr Assange committed any crime in the jurisdiction of the United States, and the pursuit of him by American authorities even now is an overreach and does not serve the interests of justice.

‘We have previously managed to secure the safe return of Australian citizens under difficult diplomatic circumstances, and we have a responsibility to do the same for Mr Assange,’ she said.

Julian Assange’s request for leave to appeal his US extradition will be heard in the UK High Court of Justice tomorrow and Wednesday. If unsuccessful, he could be on a plane to the USA within hours, where his friends and family say he is unlikely to survive.

Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning film-maker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.

Long ago, he did work experience in Parliament House with Mungo MacCallum.