AU ELECTION: Ahead of the Australian election, Julian Assange thanked incumbent Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for helping him gain his freedom. It was only Assange’s second public statement since being freed 10 months ago, writes Joe Lauria.
Anthony Albanese (l) and Julian Assange (r) (Ted86/ Cancillería del Ecuador/Wikimedia Commons/Collage by Cathy Vogan for CN)
By Joe Lauria
in Sydney, Australia
Special to Consortium News
On the eve of Australia’s general election, freed WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange has issued a statement praising the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, for doing “more to secure my freedom than any other politician or public figure.”
With Australians going to the polls on Saturday, Assange has thrust himself into the middle of his native country’s politics. It was only the second public statement Assange has made since being freed from prison in June of last year. His first was to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe last October.
Issuing the statement on Friday from Rome, where he had attended the funeral of Pope Francis I last Saturday, Assange said:
“Albo did more to secure my freedom than any other politician or public figure-even more than the late Pope, whose support was both moving and significant. Even while in opposition, Albo listened to the Australian public (and my family) and promised to take action. Six previous prime ministers came and went during my long detention. Not one agreed to meet with my lawyers. In a crowded line up, Scott Morrison cut a particularly craven figure-publicly supporting my extradition to the US.”
Assange took a swipe at the Liberal Morrison, saying that after leaving office the former prime minister joined “US weapons contractor DYNE Maritime along with his mate, former CIA chief Mike Pompeo, who had openly boasted in his memoirs about orchestrating my detention. DYNE was set up to profit from the billions funneled into AUKUS, a program Morrison himself initiated.”
On the contrary, Assange said, Albanese, “Against all expectations for an Australian politician, once elected … kept his word. He personally and repeatedly raised my case with [P]resident [Joe] Biden, and empowered [Ambassador] Kevin Rudd in Washington and [High Commissioner] Stephen Smith in London to walk into meetings and say, ‘The Australian Prime Minister and the Australian people want him free.’”
Assange also praised Albanese for getting other detained Australians out of captivity, including from China. Albanese retained the release of Australian journalist Cheng Lei from China in 2023. “This government has proven itself unusually capable of rescuing Australians caught up in sensitive political situations,” Assange wrote.
“Does this mean Albo will put Australian interests first and skillfully navigate tensions between the US, EU, and China?,” he asked. “I can’t say for sure. But I do know this: He can. Albo did right by me, and he is worlds apart from Morrison. You don’t need to be a bully to have a backbone.”
Dutton
Assange did not mention Peter Dutton, the opposition leader facing off against Albanese on Saturday.
Dutton was in Washington on the day Assange returned to Australia after being released from London’s Belmarsh Prison in a plea deal with the United States. Assange pleaded guilty to violating the U.S. Espionage Act’s prohibition against unauthorized possession and dissemination of defense information, but said he believed that as a publisher the First Amendment had protected him.
On the day Assange arrived back in his home country, Dutton told the press in Washington:
“I can understand the frustration of the US. Julian Assange is no hero and providing a hero’s welcome where you get slapped on the back and a personal call from the Prime Minister, I think it was a misstep.
“I think it was a misjudgement by the Prime Minister. I think (Albanese) probably regrets what he did and having our two most senior diplomats in Stephen Smith and Kevin Rudd on the plane or greeting him like he was a returned prisoner of war or as you saw him in that there’s no moral equivalence whatsoever with somebody like Cheng Lei. And I think the government’s made a mistake and I think they now recognise.”
Australian media reported Assange’s statement as “endorsing” Albanese, who has a slim lead in opinion polls ahead of Saturday’s vote.
CORRECTION: Assange addressed the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe last October, not the European Commission as was earlier reported.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.
Assange may have felt moved to repay Albo with some support and I understand that, but repeating his words via an email to all registered supporters, appears to be asking us all to support Albo because of Assange. That I WILL NOT DO. I have never voted Liberal but now I will never vote Labor again. A PM who supports a genocide is an absolute red line for me. Many long term Assange supporters are saying this. Thanks to CN for reporting. Lorese Vera Canberra.
“You don’t need to be a bully to have a backbone” is mistaken concept IMO. A bully is scared of his own shadow which is why he is a bully…a compensation for courage, or lack thereof.
Carolyn Z. Understandable your disappointment, but Julian is no
hypocrite. When he was banging is head against Belmarsh prison
walls, the Pope did visit him. And he does represent investigative
journalism, now nearly a crime. Nor is he a friend of fascism:
“Collateral Murder” got him five years in prison, and today in his
special way with words: “You don’t need to be a bully [Trump] to
have a back bone” [courage speaking truth to oppressive power].
For the record, Stella Assange was invited to the Vatican to meet with the Pope, who did not travel to Belmarsh to see Assange.
My bad! Thanks CN for the correction.
Where on earth did you get the idea that the Pope visited Assange? We definitely would have heard about that!
Kudos to Joe Lauria & CN for keeping the readership abreast of this view of the ongoing Julian Assange saga.
It’s good to read that Julian has broken his public silence and is using his ‘voice’ to correct the record regarding his release from torturous false imprisonment. The current global circumstances, especially here in the USA, could use a large dose of Assange’s journalistic truth telling.
As Usual,
EA aka Thom
Agreed. Yes, thanks to CN. Precious little is reported elsewhere regarding Assange.
Well said.
Thanks
Julian Assange is disappointing me by his attendance at the funeral of a Pope who aided the fascist junta in Argentina during that country’s “dirty war”. Now he is fawning on Albanese. I’m thinking that his mind was really damaged deliberately while he was incarcerated in Belmarsh Prison.
I believe it is wrong to claim that Jorge Maria Bergoglio, as he then was, “aided the fascist junta” . For Argentina’s 1980 Nobel Peace Prize-winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, himself a victim of the dictatorship, who was tortured and held without trial for 14 months in 1977, Bergoglio was stainless. “There were bishops and priests who were accomplices, but not Bergoglio,” he said. “There is nothing linking him to the dictatorship.”
Indeed, with his ascension to popehood, various witnesses came forward to paint a picture of Bergoglio acting behind the scenes to rescue a number of people whose lives were in danger from the military death squads that began roaming Argentina.
The priest Miguel La Civita, a close collaborator of Bishop Enrique Angelelli, who was murdered by the dictatorship, said: “Bergoglio put us under his protection. He was secretly helping people who were persecuted by the military, hiding them at the school he headed in Buenos Aires.”
Julian Assange IS a hero. I am an American who has followed his case since the beginning. Assange became a martyr by telling truth to power. Wish there were more like him in the world. God Bless Julian Assange.
With an endorsement like that I would hope the Australians will do the right thing and elect Albanese Saturday. Thanks for publicizing this.