Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said yesterday that he would engage “diplomatically” over the US prosecution of Julian Assange, but he is standing by earlier remarks questioning the purpose of further legal action.
As domestic pressure mounted on him to intervene in the WikiLeaks frontman’s case, Albanese said he is sticking to comments he made while in opposition last year that “enough is enough.”
“I do not see what purpose is served by the ongoing pursuit of Mr Assange,” Albanese said at the time.
Photo: AFP
However, the Australian leader criticized “people who think that if you put things in capital letters on Twitter and put an exclamation mark, then that somehow makes it more important.”
Instead, he said: “I intend to lead a government that engages diplomatically and appropriately with our partners.”
Assange’s wife, Stella Assange, told ABC Radio yesterday that she had heard that the Albanese government was raising her husband’s case with US President Joe Biden’s administration.
“That is extremely welcome news,” she said, adding that she had not been able to see Assange since a British court last week cleared a path for his extradition to the US.
“When I heard the news I just wanted to give him a hug,” she said.
Assange’s long-running legal saga began in 2010 after WikiLeaks published more than 500,000 classified US documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He has been held on remand at a top-security jail in southeast London since 2019 for jumping bail in a previous case accusing him of sexual assault in Sweden.
That case was dropped, but he was not released on grounds that he was a flight risk in the US extradition case.
As Assange’s potential US extradition looms, several high-profile Australians, including former minister of foreign affairs Bob Carr, have called on Albanese to demand the US drop the prosecution.
“If Albanese asks, my guess is America will agree,” Carr wrote yesterday in an op-ed in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Carr said that Assange’s prosecution stood in sharp contrast to the US pardoning former military intelligence officer Chelsea Manning, who had leaked secret files to WikiLeaks.
“Our new prime minister can say: ‘We’re not fans of the guy either, Mr President, but it’s gone on long enough. We’re good allies. Let this one drop,’” he wrote.
During an election campaign last month that swept his Labor Party to power, Albanese said that Assange had “paid a big price for the publication of that information already.”
Carr was minister of foreign affairs in 2012 when Assange, who was facing sexual assault allegations, sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
For much of the past decade, Australia’s previous conservative government did not publicly advocate for Assange’s release.
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
MORE BANS: Australia last year required sites to remove accounts held by under-16s, with a few countries pushing for similar action at an EU level and India considering its own ban Indonesia on Friday said it would ban social media access for children under 16, citing threats from online pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud and Internet addiction. “Accounts belonging to children under 16 on high-risk platforms will start to be deactivated, beginning with YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox,” Indonesian Minister of Communications and Digital Meutya Hafid said. “The government is stepping in so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giants of the algorithm. Implementation will begin on March 28, 2026,” she said. The social media ban would be introduced in stages “until all platforms fulfill their
RSS