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AAP
AAP
Politics
Paul Osborne

Assange future raised in Albanese-Biden talks

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has raised his concerns about the ongoing jailing of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange directly with US President Joe Biden.

Mr Albanese met with Mr Biden for an informal dinner and formal talks at the White House this week.

The prime minister earlier this month said he hoped for the release of Assange, as "enough is enough".

He said there was nothing to be gained by the Australian's ongoing incarceration and that he would continue to raise the issue with the US government.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported Mr Albanese raised his concerns in discussions with the president. 

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told Australian reporters this week in a briefing it was a Department of Justice extradition matter.

In September, a cross-party group of Australian politicians visited Washington to call on the US government to abandon its extradition proceedings against Assange.

He faces 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse after WikiLeaks published a raft of classified documents more than a decade ago.

They included videos of a 2007 Baghdad air strike, field reports from the Iraq War, and hundreds of thousands of items of US diplomatic correspondence

He was granted political asylum and lived in London's Ecuadorian embassy from 2012 until 2019.

Assange has been imprisoned in the United Kingdom for the four years since then and continues to fight extradition to the US.

American prosecutors allege he helped US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk.

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