Assange’s supporters staged protests on Friday, calling for his release from prison.
American prosecutors say the Australian citizen helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk.
To his supporters, Assange is a secrecy-busting journalist who exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. A British court ruled in April that Assange could be sent to face trial in the U.S., sending the case to the U.K. government for a decision. Home Secretary Priti Patel signed an order on June 17 authorizing Assange’s extradition.Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rejected callsAssange’s supporters and lawyers maintain he was acting as a journalist and is entitled to First Amendment protections of freedom of speech.
Assange remains in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison, where he has been since he was arrested in 2019 for skipping bail during a separate legal battle. Before that, he spent seven years inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault.
Sweden dropped the sex crimes investigations in November 2019 because so much time had elapsed, but British judges have kept Assange in prison pending the outcome of the extradition case.