Washington [US], July 30: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday defended his country's ongoing efforts to prosecute Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
At a press conference with his Australian counterpart Penny Wong in Brisbane, Blinken echoed Washington's position on the issue. "The actions that he is alleged to have committed risked very serious harm to our national security to the benefit of our adversaries and put named human sources at grave risk," Blinken said.
Australia's center-left Labor Party government has been arguing since winning the elections last year that the United States should end its pursuit of the 52-year-old, who has spent four years in a British prison fighting extradition to the United States.
The United States has been trying to secure the extradition of the Australian-born British national for years in a legal tug-of-war.
However, Assange's legal options to fight this have now been largely exhausted.
Assange's freedom is widely seen as a test of Australia's leverage with President Joe Biden's administration.
Wong made it clear that Canberra is committed to ending the prosecution. At the same time, she stressed that the Australian government cannot interfere in ongoing legal proceedings in the United Kingdom.
The US judiciary wants to try Assange on espionage charges and if convicted, he faces up to 175 years in prison.
The 52-year-old is accused of stealing and publishing secret material from US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, together with whistleblower Chelsea Manning, thereby putting the lives of US informants in danger. Conversely, supporters of Assange see him as a journalist who brought war crimes to light.
Since his arrest in 2019, Assange has been held in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London. He previously spent several years in Ecuador's embassy in London to avoid arrest.
Most recently, he failed in an appeal against his extradition in the London High Court. This decision is now to be reviewed. If his appeal is again rejected, the only option would be to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
Australia remains ambiguous about whether the United States should drop the prosecution or strike a plea bargain.
Assange faces 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks' publication of hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic and military documents in 2010.
American prosecutors allege he helped US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk.
Australia argues there is a "disconnect" between the US treatment of Assange and Manning. Then-US President Barack Obama commuted Manning's 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her release in 2017.
Source: Qatar Tribune