June 28, 2024
AFTER securing Julian Assange's freedom, his supporters have launched the next stage of a campaign to enable the WikiLeaks founder to fully embrace civilian life.
A pardon from the United States President is the final prize sought on behalf of Mr Assange, who returned to Australia after a 14-year legal saga as a convicted spy.
Fronting the media on Thursday, flanked by members of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group, Stella Assange said her husband had effectively pleaded guilty "to journalism" rather than espionage.
But the US Justice Department has said in a statement that, unlike news organizations, WikiLeaks had published classified documents without removing identifying information, creating "a grave and imminent risk to human life".
A spokeswoman for the US embassy declined to comment when asked if Mr Assange or his lawyers had sought a meeting with officials in Canberra.
Asked about the campaign for a presidential pardon, Mr Assange's US lawyer, Barry J Pollack, said he hoped, in time, "the same support that he received when he was in prison will again gather steam".
"The President of the United States has absolute pardon power," Mr Pollack told reporters in Parliament House.
"President Biden, or any subsequent president, absolutely can - and, in my mind, should - issue a pardon to Julian Assange."
He said there was "no evidence that any harm has befallen any individual anywhere in the world as a result of Mr Assange's publications".
Mr Assange was convicted of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information under the US Espionage Act on Wednesday, after pleading guilty in a deal that sentenced him to time served.
His wife would not be drawn on whether, if he was given access to classified documents again in future, Mr Assange would "do it all again".
"Julian just got back from a 72-hour-long flight to freedom and five years of incarceration in a high-security prison and seven years before that arbitrarily detained in the Ecuadorian embassy," she said.
"He needs time to rest and recover and he is just rediscovering normal life."
Ms Assange met with Foreign Minister Penny Wong on Thursday morning, when she had been expected to raise her wish for Mr Assange to be pardoned.
Asked about the meeting, Senator Wong told reporters it had been "a private conversation" and was tight-lipped on the question of a presidential pardon.
"That is a matter for Mr Assange and his legal team, and the decision on that is a matter for the United States," she said.
Earlier, the minister told Channel 7's Sunrise when asked if the Albanese government would support the push for a pardon: "We would respect US processes".
She told the ABC that while freedom of the press was "a key principle of our democracy", so too was the protection of national security information.
In a post on X on Wednesday afternoon, US ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy expressed gratitude to the Australian government for "their commitment and assistance in this process".
"The return of Julian Assange to Australia brings this long-standing and difficult case to a close," the statement said.
Mr Assange flew into Canberra on a charter flight accompanied by US ambassador Kevin Rudd and UK high commissioner Stephen Smith, who were instrumental in securing his freedom along with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Senator Wong.
The WikiLeaks founder entered a plea deal with the US Department of Justice at hearing on the Pacific island Saipan on Wednesday, with Mr Rudd by his side, after seven years holed up in London's Ecuadorian embassy and five years in Belmarsh Prison in the UK.
On Thursday evening, Mr Rudd appeared on the ABC and spoke with reporters in the press gallery.
He made no mention of any discussion about a presidential pardon.
Asked by ABC host David Speers if he had "a good chat" with Mr Assange on the flight to Canberra, Mr Rudd said: "Well, on an aircraft such as that, you're not gonna sit quietly in the corner and do the cryptic crossword."
Later, Mr Rudd told reporters when asked if the Australian government had overstepped given Mr Assange's polarising reputation that his assistance was simply a matter of consular assistance.
"It doesn't matter which Australian citizen finds themselves in difficulty abroad, the responsibility of any Australian government is to deal with it as a consular case," he said.
"That's what we've been doing. Same thing about [Australian journalist] Cheng Lei, same thing about others. Each of the circumstances are different.
"But as I said, just you never know when someone is going to, a friend of yours, a relative, is going to end up in a pickle somewhere in the world."
Opposition Home Affairs spokesperson James Paterson said while the Coalition "has welcomed his decision to plead guilty so that he can be released", Mr Assange was not an innocent man.
Senator Paterson said the "very serious national security offences" Mr Assange had pleaded guilty to "are not just offences against the United States".
He said it was "a mistake ... to make comparisons between Julian Assange and Cheng Lei, Sean Turnell and Kylie Moore-Gilbert."
"These were Australians who were innocent, who were persecuted for other reasons by authoritarian powers ... That is very different to what Mr Assange has done," he told Sky.
"They're offences against the Five Eyes intelligence gathering alliance, including Australia, because they put the sources of that alliance at grave risk."
Earlier, Opposition Foreign Affairs spokesperson Simon Birmingham said there would be "many Americans who think that it's inappropriate for the Australian Prime Minister to provide that type of homecoming welcome to Julian Assange".
Mr Pollack was asked about a clause in Mr Assange's plea deal requiring him to instruct the editor of WikiLeaks to destroy any classified US information still in its possession.
"The materials that we are talking about are now more than a decade old," he said.
Nonetheless, he said, Mr Assange had complied with the clause.
