KEY POINTS:
- Julian Assange's father says does not have hope, but 'faith'.
- Wikileaks founder fighting extradition to the US, where he could face 175 years behind bars.
- A cross-party of politicians met in Canberra this week to discuss his future.
One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts and Greens Senator David Shoebridge are rarely on the same page.
From climate change, immigration, the Voice to Parliament — the pair are often at odds on issues.
But on Thursday, their eyes were fixed on a screen at Parliament House, listening to a presentation that seemed to have struck a chord across Australia's political divide.
Stella Moris was beaming in via videolink from Europe.
Her husband, Australian Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, has been on remand for nearly four years at London's Belmarsh Prison, a maximum-security jail particularly reserved for inmates deemed national security risks.
Stella Moris, wife of Julian Assange, addresses the ‘Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group’ via videolink during a virtual briefing at Parliament House in Canberra, Thursday, March 9, 2023. Source: AAP / AAP Image / Lukas Coch
The group is led by independent MP Andrew Wilkie, and includes representatives from the crossbench and all parties in parliament.
Mr Kenny tells SBS News that any avenue for politicians to get to grips with the facts, rather than "propaganda", was important.
"We all come in to it with preconceived ideas. They do as well, until they have an understanding of the lies that have been told about Julian. Then they start to get a realisation that there's a little more to this story than [they] thought," he says.
Warning for journalists in Australia
Under Mr Assange, Wikileaks published hundreds of thousands of classified American documents, including a video - titled Collateral Murder - depicting a 2007 US airstrike which killed journalists and civilians.
The 18 charges he faces in the United States — its Department of Justice (DoJ) accused him of "one of the largest compromises of classified information" in the country's history — carry a collective maximum sentence of 175 years.
The DoJ argues Mr Assange put American agents, along with Afghans and Iraqis working with them, at risk by publishing their unredacted names.
It says Mr Assange is being pursued for endangering lives, not for acting as a publisher, an argument which could potentially avoid any issues with the First Amendment, guaranteeing freedom of speech.
Julian Assange’s father John Shipton (centre) addresses the ‘Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group’ during a briefing at Parliament House in Canberra on Thursday. Source: AAP / AAP / Lukas Coch
In 2019, Swedish authorities dropped a separate investigation into a rape allegation levelled at the Wikileaks founder.
Mr Kenny predicts his client will spend a minimum of three more years in the British legal system, and it could take five to seven years to "exercise his rights" in the US if the extradition goes ahead.
"Justice delayed, is justice denied," he says.
Mr Kenny says the superpower's pursuit of his client had been "largely accepted" by the media. But he warns the world's biggest democracy was setting an international precedent that could be wielded by authoritarian regimes in the future.
"You think you're safe here at SBS. You're in Australia, and there's no extradition treaty, so you can write whatever you like about China," he says.
"But you don't want to go to Bali for your holiday, you don't want to go to Paris, you don't want to go to Rome, because they have extradition treaties with China.
"Why wouldn't the Chinese exercise the same international legal rights that the Americans are exercising to quash their critics?"
Julian Assange's mental health in jail
Mr Shipton sits quietly as the lawyer talks, but becomes expansive when asked about his son's state of mind.
“His mood rises and falls as he feels that things are improving or that they've gone into the doldrums," he says.
He says Mr Assange's transfer to Belmarsh was a low point when he plunged into a "profound depression" as he was isolated for 23 hours a day in the prison’s health wing.
At least one of the inmates in the wing was a convicted murderer, Mr Shipton says.
“The prisoners called the health wing ‘the hell wing’. You’re removed from association and you’re locked up with people suffering various forms of madness,” he says.
Mr Assange spent seven years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Source: AAP
After a legal process lasting over a decade, he dismisses the value of optimism in ending his son’s incarceration.
“Hope as a tool will just wear out and be rather stupid … just do what you can,” he says.
But asked whether hope sustains him personally, his response was simple.
“No," he says, pausing. "No, I just have faith.”
Cross-party engagement
Mr Kenny says cross-party engagement, a feature in many democracies that have pro-Assange parliamentary working groups, shows the “underlying fundamentals” of the case transcended politics.
“It's about press freedom. It's about a person being prosecuted for exposing the truth,” he says.
“People on the left and the right of politics know that if they are to survive, we need a free press. We need government to be held responsible and accountable, and we need whistleblowers.”
Government MP Josh Wilson was unable to be present at the meeting, instead releasing a video stressing the case had broader implications than a single man.
“It's actually important in a larger way because really, the prosecution of Julian Assange undermines some important principles of press freedom and accountability of government action,” he said.
“It's time for the persecution, prosecution, and incarceration of Julian Assange to come to an end.”
But Mr Wilson said he was pleased to be part of a government that had said “enough is enough”.
How the Albanese government considers the case
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has reiterated his desire to see Mr Assange return, but has emphasised the need for quiet diplomacy as a means to getting there.
A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade stressed Australia was unable to intervene in another country’s court processes “just as they are unable to intervene in Australia’s”.
But they said Mr Assange, like any Australian jailed overseas, was receiving regular consular support.
“The Australian government has been clear in our view that Mr Assange’s case has dragged on for too long and that it should be brought to a close,” the department said in a statement.
“We will continue to express this view to the United Kingdom and United States governments.”
Mr Shipton says his engagement with Labor had been limited to a single meeting since it took office.
“We found Penny Wong erudite on the matter, and sympathetic. [But] since then, we’ve had no contact with any member of the government,” he says.
He insists what he calls "legal matters [which] are a veil placed" over his son must lift, attention turning to what Wikileaks exposed.
"Our focus was taken from that, to the immediacy of the circumstances of a persecuted individual. We take sides or have views, while we stop looking at the bloodshed and destruction of nation after nation," he says.
