The campaign to free Julian Assange has reached a dramatic final moment that will divide opinion just as much as every other phase in his remarkable life.
Australian officials were hostile to Assange in the early years of WikiLeaks because everything he did was a challenge to established power. Rather than support authority, he wanted to expose it. As recently as 2022, shortly before the federal election, then-prime minister Scott Morrison merely said Assange could return home if the charges against him were dropped. “The justice system is making its way and we’re not a party to that,” he said. Australia seemed to wash its hands of its problem child.Only in the last two years did anything change.
Key figures in the outcome include Foreign Minister Penny Wong, former prime minister Kevin Rudd, who worked the problem hard as ambassador to the US, and former foreign minister Stephen Smith, now the high commissioner to the UK. Smith visited Assange in prison last year and flew with him from London to Saipan on Tuesday.
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