After Julian Assange was released by a court on the remote US Pacific territory of Saipan, ending a 14-year legal battle, the WikiLeaks founder's lawyer first thanked Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for making the outcome possible. Jennifer Robinson, the Australian attorney of Assange, said diplomacy and intense lobbying with the highest authorities in the United States played a big role in Assange walking free on Wednesday, after spending five years in a high-security British prison and seven years holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. "At every opportunity, and when Australian officials were making outreach to the US, they knew that they were acting with the full authority of the prime minister of Australia," Robinson told reporters outside the courtroom in Saipan.
The Australian Government has consistently said that Mr. Assange’s case has dragged on for too long, and that there is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration. We want him brought home to Australia.
pic.twitter.com/1Ju5u88cH9 — Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) June 25, 2024 Albanese has claimed Assange's release as a win for the country, which leveraged its security ties with Washington and London to strengthen its case to resolve the plight of an Australian citizen.
"This work has been complex and it has been considered. This is what standing up for Australians around the world looks like," Albanese, leader of a centre-left Labor government, told parliament on Wednesday. Assange, 52,.
