SYDNEY: Julian Assange’s supporters said on Wednesday that the campaign to release the Wikileaks founder is on the “cusp of success” after a strong diplomatic drive by his nation, Australia, which claims he has been imprisoned for too long.
Assange is being held in Britain and battling extradition to the U.S., where he is wanted on criminal charges over revealing confidential U.S. diplomatic cables and military records in 2010.
Many of his supporters gathered at Hyde Park in Sydney for a march through the city that was planned to coincide with a visit of US President Joe Biden, who cancelled his visit due to the US debt ceiling crisis.
Stella Assange, Assange’s wife, who travelled to Australia for the protest, told Reuters that meetings with MPs in Canberra went well. She claimed she strongly felt a coordinated effort by Australian politicians, the government, and the general public to bring Julian back home.
The push for Assange’s release is on the “cusp of success,” his father, John Shipton, told Reuters separately at the march.
Australia is backing the campaign for the release of Assange before his extradition to the United States. Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister, and opposition leader Peter Dutton said this month that the detention of Assange had gone on too long.
When Albanese, an advocate for Assange’s release, visited the United States in November, he raised the issue with Biden. Last month, the Australian High Commissioner to Britain, Stephen Smith, visited the free-speech activist in prison; Albanese said he had encouraged the meeting.
WikiLeaks came to light in 2010 when it revealed several secret diplomatic cables and classified files, the most significant security breach in US military history.
Assange’s supporters believe he is an anti-establishment hero who has been victimized as he exposed US wrongdoing in Afghanistan and Iraq. His prosecution is a politically motivated attack on journalism and free speech.
US prosecutors and Western security officials regard him as a reckless enemy of the state whose actions imperilled the lives of agents named in the leaked documents.
Stephen Kenny, a lawyer for former Australian Guantanamo detainee David Hicks, told the gathering that Assange had committed no crime. “This is a political matter, and it needs a political solution,” he said.
