Assange Father says Australia's Diplomatic Push May Free Him

Julian Assange’s father John Shipton

Four years after being imprisoned in London for revealing alleged American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the end of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s ordeal may be in sight, supporters say.

If Assange is extradited, tried and convicted, he faces up to 175 years in jail for violating the U.S. Espionage Act. Assange faces prosecution for obtaining and publishing US government documents, many in collaboration with international newspapers including the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and Der Spiegel - none of whom the US Department of Justice has also tried to pursue.

In recent months, the government of Australia, where Assange is a citizen, has voiced concerns about the situation in diplomatic fora, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and opposition leader Peter Dutton also telling media that Assange’s detention has gone on too long. Supporters of Assange believe these efforts will ultimately make the difference, with Assange’s father John Shipton saying Australia’s support had put the campaign to free his son on the "cusp of success."

Julian Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he sought sanctuary several years earlier, in April 2019 and immediately arrested on criminal charges over the release of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables in 2010.

Public support in Australia has been steadily growing too. Hundreds of supporters gathered at Hyde Park in Sydney in late May for a march through the city that had been planned to coincide with a visit by U.S. President Joe Biden. In the event, Biden cancelled his Australian visit but the protest went ahead nonetheless.

Assange's wife, Stella Assange, travelled to Australia for the protest and told Reuters that meetings with politicians in Canberra had been productive, in sharp contrast to the previous government who had offered little in the way of assistance.

"What I feel intensely is a concerted effort to bring Julian home from the Australian politicians, obviously from the government and also from the Australian population," she said.

PM Albanese, an advocate for Assange's release while in opposition, raised the case with Biden during a visit to the US in November. The content of these discussions has not been disclosed.

In addition, the Australian High Commissioner to Britain Stephen Smith visited Julian Assange in prison last month, a meeting Albanese said he had encouraged.

Responding to a Parliamentary question from independent MP Andrew Wilkie, Albanese said he was working in the “most effective way possible” to secure the release of Assange but declined an invitation to meet his wife who was watching the Parliament proceedings from the public gallery.

“A priority for us isn’t doing something that is a demonstration, it’s actually doing something that produces an outcome,” Albanese told Parliament. “And that’s my focus, not grandstanding.”

“I’ve made it very clear to the U.S. administration and also to the U.K. administration of the Australian government’s view and I appreciate the fact that that is now a bipartisan view … that enough is enough.”

“Nothing is served from the ongoing incarceration of Julian Assange. What I have done … is to act in the most effective way possible,” he said. “What I have done is act diplomatically in order to maximize the opportunity that is there of breaking through an issue which has gone on for far too long."

Assange’s wife told reporters that the outlook, if he were extradited, was bleak: “He will be buried in the deepest, darkest hole of the US prison system, isolated forever. We must do everything we can to ensure that Julian never, ever sets foot in a US prison."