Cartoon by Awantha Artigala

Australia should demand US release of Assange, says Carr

Brisbane Times: Australia should demand the freedom of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by citing the precedent set when the United States pardoned others for revealing state secrets, former NSW premier and foreign minister Bob Carr has said in a new call on his federal Labor colleagues.

The call sets out an argument for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to persuade United States President Joe Biden to release Assange in the same way former president Barack Obama pardoned Chelsea Manning, who released classified information to WikiLeaks while she was a US Army intelligence analyst.

“Manning, the American who slipped the material to Assange, goes free while the Australian who published it faces extradition, trial in Virginia and the rest of his life in cruel confinement in a high-security prison, likely on the plains of Oklahoma,” Carr wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on Monday.

“In the context of Australia’s role as an ally – the heft we deliver for the US empire – a decision to let Assange walk free rates about five minutes of President Biden’s Oval Office attention.”

The argument comes after Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke said on Sunday the government believed the case against Assange had gone on too long but did not want to “conduct diplomacy by megaphone” when it was engaged in conversations about the case.

“The issue needs to be brought to a close. Australia is not a party to the prosecution that’s happening here. Each country has its own legal system,” he told Sky News.

“We’ve been building constructive relationships again with our allies, and they’re conversations that happen in government-to-government.”

Albanese told The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age at the weekend that he stood by comments he made in December as opposition leader when he said he could not see the purpose served by the continued pursuit of Assange >>>