President Biden is thinking about Australia’s request to stop prosecuting Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.
Australia’s parliament recently passed a measure asking for Assange to be sent back to Australia.
The US wants to bring Assange from the UK to face charges related to leaking military documents.
Assange says he was just doing journalism. President Biden said on Wednesday that they’re thinking about Australia’s request.
Assange is currently fighting against being sent to the US in UK courts. The UK stopped the extradition temporarily in March because the US needs to promise Assange won’t face the death penalty. The UK’s High Court will check the US response at the end of May.
Assange’s wife, Stella, tweeted to President Biden asking him to drop the charges. The editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks says Biden could still stop the extradition, which he believes is politically motivated.
US prosecutors want to charge Assange with 18 counts, mostly under the Espionage Act, for releasing secret US military and diplomatic records.
Assange started WikiLeaks in 2006 and published millions of documents, including videos showing civilian deaths in Iraq and secret US military files leaked by Chelsea Manning.
Manning leaked the files in 2010 and was later jailed, but her sentence was shortened by President Obama. The US government says these leaks are one of the biggest breaches of classified information in US history.
Assange has been in a London prison for five years. Before that, he was in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years to avoid extradition to Sweden over rape accusations, which were dropped in 2019.
Credit : BBC
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68784298