Inside the secret talks to bring Assange home

Australian officials issued a legal deed last week to clear a final hurdle in bringing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange home from years in prison over American claims of espionage.

Assange was adamant at first that he would not set foot on American soil and his team argued as recently as six weeks ago that he could appear in court by video rather than fly halfway across the world. The Australian high commissioner to the UK, former foreign affairs minister Stephen Smith, had to accompany Assange on the flight. The ambassador to the US, former prime minister Kevin Rudd, arranged to fly to Saipan to meet the charter jet.Astonishingly, all sides kept this extraordinary journey secret. The news only broke when Assange was on the flight on Monday night, local time, after he had been granted bail by the UK High Court in a secret hearing last week.

Negotiations sped up at the Department of Justice, Robinson says, after the High Court decision. The plea deal had been talked about for more than six months, but the US side engaged in earnest over the past eight weeks.report helps explain why. Worried about the risk of defeat, the attorneys tried harder to reach a compromise.

Robinson believes the arrival of the Albanese government in May 2022 was a key turning point – and she told Foreign Minister Penny Wong this during a spontaneous meeting, along with Stella Assange, in the press gallery of Parliament House on Thursday morning as they headed to different media interviews.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus put the Australian view directly to his US counterpart, Merrick Garland, in a meeting in Washington in February this year. Smith visited Assange in prison, while Rudd lobbied in Washington.At no point, say those aware of the talks, did the Australian government say how the case should be resolved.The message to the Americans was that the case was an irritant in the relationship.

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