President Joe Biden revealed on Wednesday that he is contemplating halting the prosecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. This consideration comes amidst mounting international pressure and calls for Assange’s release, including a recent request from Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to cease the yearslong prosecution and repatriate Assange to Australia.
The deliberation surfaced during Biden’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House on Wednesday, as the two leaders engaged in an official state visit. Biden conveyed to reporters his openness to the idea of ending Assange’s prosecution while strolling with Kishida along the White House colonnade, following a formal welcome ceremony on the South Lawn.
Assange, currently in custody in the United Kingdom, is nearing the five-year mark of his detention in British custody. The Wikileaks founder faces espionage charges in the United States, stemming from the 2010 publication of classified U.S. Army intelligence material, including footage of U.S. airstrikes in Baghdad, diplomatic cables, and classified communications from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Among the damning disclosures was a video depicting a U.S. military helicopter attack in Baghdad that resulted in civilian casualties, including two Reuters journalists mistaken for armed combatants. The leaked information was provided to Wikileaks by former U.S. Army intelligence officer Chelsea Manning, whose initial 35-year prison sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama in 2017.
Biden’s prior stance on Assange, dating back to his tenure as vice president, was critical, labeling him a ‘high-tech terrorist’ during a December 2010 interview on Meet the Press.
Assange’s legal saga began in 2010 with his arrest in London under a Swedish warrant for questioning related to allegations of rape and sexual assault. Seeking refuge, he was granted political asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012, where he remained until 2019, when his asylum was revoked, leading to his arrest by London Metropolitan Police.
The U.S. Department of Justice escalated the legal battle by unsealing a 2018 charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and adding 17 espionage charges in May of the same year, carrying a maximum sentence of 170 years. A grand jury expanded the indictment in June 2020, alleging Assange’s involvement in recruiting and conspiring with hackers to obtain information for Wikileaks.
Efforts to extradite Assange to the U.S. have been vigorously contested by his legal team, while Australia’s Parliament passed a motion in February advocating for his return to Australia rather than extradition to the U.S. Albanese, in support of this motion, underscored the need for a resolution, emphasizing that the protracted legal proceedings cannot persist indefinitely.