Australian prime minister on Tuesday called for an end to Julian Assange’s imprisonment after a court temporarily halted the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition from a London jail to the US, Australian media reported.
Britain’s High Court allowed Assange to appeal the extradition decision, thwarting Washington’s attempts to put the 52-year-old Australian hacker on trial for leaking US military secrets.
Following the judgement, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese renewed his call for an end to Assange’s prosecution, saying his “continued imprisonment” would “get him nowhere”. Albanese told reporters, while also declaring “enough is enough”:
“We continue to work very closely to achieve that outcome.“
Assange will be able to file a narrow appeal that will consider whether he will receive free speech protections as an alien in the US legal system.
Nicola Fratoianni, an Italian politician and leader of the Italian Left party, commented on the court’s decision on X:
“Good news from the High Court in Londda: Assange is now free. Truth and journalism is not a crime.”
The UK government has approved Assange’s extradition in June 2022. He has been held in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison since April 2019, after spending seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Earlier this year, Albanese said Assange’s seemingly endless prosecution “cannot last forever”.
US authorities want to put Assange on trial for divulging US military secrets about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The court accuses Assange of publishing some 700,000 confidential documents relating to US military and diplomatic activities since 2010.
