Australia has talked to the US about the future of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, but Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said yesterday that it cannot protect the Australian activist from other countries’ justice systems.
Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr revealed yesterday that he had discussed the concerns of Assange and his family with US officials. Assange claims that the US has already secretly indicted him for divulging US secrets, and will act on the indictment if Sweden succeeds in extraditing him from Britain.
“The US has said nothing to indicate they’re planning an indictment,” Carr said.
However, Gillard told Australia’s parliament yesterday that if the US did extradite Assange, the “Australian government cannot interfere in the judicial processes of other countries.”
She endorsed Carr’s comments, saying there was no advice from Washington that there was an indictment or a decision made to extradite.
Britain’s Supreme Court on Wednesday endorsed Assange’s extradition to Sweden, bringing him a big step closer to prosecution in a Scandinavian court.
However, a question mark hung over the decision after Assange’s lawyer made the highly unusual suggestion that she would try to reopen the case, raising the prospect of more legal wrangling.
Assange has spent almost two years fighting attempts to send him to Sweden, where he is wanted over sex crime allegations. He has yet to be charged.
He and his supporters have suggested that the sex allegations are a cover for a planned move to extradite him to the US, but US Ambassador to Australia Jeffrey Bleich denied that the US had any interest in Sweden’s extradition bid succeeding.
“It’s one of those narratives that has been made up. There’s nothing to it,” Bleich said late on Wednesday.
Australian authorities have cooperated with the US in investigating WikiLeaks’ conduct. The Australians have concluded that Assange has broken no Australian law.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not