President Joe Biden said he is “considering” Australia’s request to drop all charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Biden revealed this during a Wednesday meeting at the White House with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Assange faces 17 espionage and computer misuse charges, which could lead to him serving up to 175 years behind bars.
Biden replied, “We’re looking into it,” in response to the question of whether or not the U.S. will accept Australia’s request to drop all charges against Assange.
Video of Joe Biden replying ‘we’re considering it’ to a reporter asking whether the US will drop the charges against Julian Assange
Did he mean to say this? Or was this another slip-up? https://t.co/N3cmlaCjus https://t.co/HQoVUKmoyc pic.twitter.com/lCDtiQp572
— Afshin Rattansi (@afshinrattansi) April 10, 2024
In February, Australia’s parliament passed a resolution with the backing of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese calling for Assange to return home.
Albanese stated that “people will have different views on Mr Assange’s conduct.” “But no matter where people are, this cannot continue indefinitely.”
Assange was wanted by U.S. prosecutors for his involvement in publishing classified documents via WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks released a huge trove of classified material, including diplomatic cable and military documents that exposed sensitive information about U.S. diplomatic and military activities.
One of these videos was from a U.S. helicopter that showed the killing of civilians in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital.
Assange, who spent seven years as a self-exile at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and five of those years in the high-security Belmarsh Prison in Britain, is now fighting against extradition from Britain to the U.S. The London High Court recently halted his case due to concerns that Assange could face the death sentence.
Tomorrow Julian will have spent five years in Belmarsh high security prison.#FreeAssangeNOW#Assange5YearsInBelmarsh pic.twitter.com/IUU1k3GWtU
— Stella Assange #FreeAssangeNOW (@Stella_Assange) April 10, 2024
In March, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged British courts not to extradite him to the U.S., citing “persecutions” he might face.
I think it’s good that the British courts give him the protection he needs because he can expect to be persecuted in the USA for having leaked American state secrets.
The representatives of the United States failed to convince the British judges, during the last hearing, that the possible sentence would occur in a reasonable framework from Britain’s point of view.
In January 2017, just days before leaving office, President Barack Obama commuted Chelsea Manning’s sentence. She had supplied many of Assange’s most explosive documents. Biden was vice president at the time.
Obama at the time said,
I am very confident that justice has been done. Chelsea Manning served a harsh prison sentence. I don’t believe that anyone who was thinking of leaking classified information would be able to get away with it.
The Justice Department declined to comment until now.
