After 4 Years of Imprisonment, Australian Lawmakers Urge US to Drop Assange Extradition

Marking the four-year anniversary of Julian Assange's arrest and imprisonment in a high-security London jail, dozens of Australian lawmakers signed an open letter on Monday urging U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to drop his efforts to extradite the WikiLeaks founder to the United States.

The letter, signed by 48 lawmakers from across the political spectrum, warned that Assange's extradition would "set a dangerous precedent for all global citizens, journalists, publishers, media organizations, and the freedom of the press."

"If the extradition request is approved, Australians will witness the deportation of one of our citizens from one AUKUS partner to another—our closest strategic ally—with Mr. Assange facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison,” the letter states, referring to the military partnership between Australia, the U.S., and the U.K.

Assange, an Australian national who is currently waging a last-ditch legal fight against U.S. extradition efforts that began under the Trump administration, has been detained in London's Belmarsh Prison since 2019, when he was forcibly removed from the U.K.'s Ecuadorian embassy and arrested by British police.

U.S. authorities have charged Assange with nearly 20 Espionage Act violations stemming from his publication of classified information that exposed war crimes committed by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange is the first publisher to ever be charged under the 1917 Espionage Act, a relic of the federal government's crackdown on dissent during the World War I.

"We request that you take a stance to uphold the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and drop the extradition proceedings to allow Mr. Assange to return home to Australia."

In recent months, human rights organizations, press freedom groups, and prominent media outlets have implored the Biden administration to end its pursuit of Assange's extradition and drop all charges against the WikiLeaks founder, calling his prosecution a grave threat to journalists everywhere.

Last June, the U.K. government formally approved the U.S. extradition request. Assange, whose health has steadily deteriorated under prison conditions that a United Nations expert decried as "psychological torture," has appealed the government's decision.

The publisher has also lodged an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights.

In their open letter, the Australian lawmakers demanded that Garland finally "drop the extradition proceedings and allow Mr. Assange to return home."

Dozens of U.K. lawmakers sent a similar message in a letter of their own on Tuesday, arguing that Assange's extradition and prosecution would "clearly have a chilling impact on journalism and would set a dangerous precedent for other journalists and media organizations."

"We request that you take a stance to uphold the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and drop the extradition proceedings to allow Mr. Assange to return home to Australia," the letter reads.

In the U.S., meanwhile, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) is collecting signatures for a letter calling on the Justice Department to stop trying to extradite Assange.

"I know many of us have very strong feelings about Mr. Assange, but what we think of him and his actions is really besides the point here," Tlaib wrote to her congressional colleagues in early March, according toThe Intercept.

"The fact of the matter is that the [way] in which Mr. Assange is being prosecuted under the notoriously undemocratic Espionage Act seriously undermines freedom of the press and the First Amendment," Tlaib added.