Stella Assange on Thursday thanked lawmakers who campaigned for the release of her husband, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, during a visit to Australia's Parliament House, where political leaders are divided over the extent to which a convicted felon should be welcomed in their home country.
“Julian is overjoyed and very grateful to the Australian people, MPs, the Government and the Opposition who have come together to speak out about the need for his release,” Stella Assange said.
Assange has not commented publicly since arriving in Australia on Wednesday after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors, ending a 14-year legal battle for his freedom.
The “Bring Julian Assange Home” group began with a few federal MPs in 2019 and has grown to 47 members as awareness grew of the dragging on prosecution over WikiLeaks' 2010 publication of about 500,000 documents about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is one of five such groups in Canberra. Assange's lawyers now want to channel that public and political support into a campaign to have Assange pardoned from his conviction.
“President (Joe) Biden or any successor president could absolutely pardon Julian Assange, and in my opinion should,” lawyer Barry Pollack said. But Adrian Watson, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said Thursday that Biden was not considering pardoning Assange.
But while Australian lawmakers largely agree that it is time to bring Assange home, they are divided on whether he deserves the same level of support as Australians recently released from arbitrary detention in China, Iran and Myanmar thanks to government intervention.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been credited with the diplomatic coup that enabled Assange to be released from a London prison and travel to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the western Pacific, where he pleaded guilty to one charge under the Espionage Act.
Assange was given credit for the five years he spent in Belmarsh prison fighting extradition and was allowed to return to Australia without further sentence. Opposition lawmakers say Albanese risked damaging ties with the United States, Australia's most important security partner, by calling the former computer hacker shortly after he arrived in Canberra.
“It is neither necessary nor appropriate for Anthony Albanese to send Julian Assange home on the same day he admitted to espionage,” said opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham. But Stella Assange argued her husband should not have been charged. “He pleaded guilty to engaging in journalism. This case criminalises journalism, journalistic activities, the standard journalistic activities of gathering and publishing news,” she said.
Assange is accused of receiving and publishing war records and diplomatic cables containing details of US military misconduct in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His work has garnered considerable support from press freedom advocates, who have praised his role in exposing military actions that might have been hidden and have warned of a chilling effect on journalists. Among the files WikiLeaks released is footage of a 2007 U.S. Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.
Assange has been hailed by his supporters as a fighter for transparency but blasted by national security hardliners who say his actions endangered lives and went far beyond the bounds of traditional journalistic duty.
Asked at a news conference after Assange's return, Albanese declined to say whether he believed Assange was a journalist unfairly pursued by US authorities. “There will continue to be different views about Julian Assange and his activities,” Albanese said. “My role as prime minister is to say categorically that whatever views people may have, there has been no point in this continued imprisonment,” he added.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong distanced her government from the movement to pardon Mr Assange. “This is a matter for Mr Assange and his legal team and that decision is a matter for the United States,” she said.
“What we are happy about is that he is back home. We thought his incarceration was prolonged,” she added. Stella Assange, the South African-born lawyer who married her husband while in prison in 2022, has given few clues about his career future.
“Julian is overjoyed and very grateful to the Australian people, MPs, the Government and the Opposition who have come together to speak out about the need for his release,” Stella Assange said.
“He's going to swim in the ocean every day. He's going to sleep in a real bed. He's going to taste real food. And he's going to enjoy his freedom,” she said. “Julian is the most principled person I know. He will always defend human rights and speak out against injustice. And he's a free man and he can decide for himself how he does that,” she added. —Associated Press writer Ammar Madani in Washington, D.C. contributed.
