Stella Assange has urged Australian journalists to lodge freedom of information requests with the United States government to extract details on its criminal case against her husband because the now-returned WikiLeaks publisher’s plea deal bans him from doing so.
On Julian Assange’s first full day back in Australia, his wife and legal counsel have again thanked those parliamentarians – especially the prime minister – and supporters in Australia and worldwide whose 14-year campaign resulted in his release. Assange, 52, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to one charge of espionage and was sentenced to time already served.
“If Julian pleaded guilty in federal court in Saipan, it’s because he was pleading guilty to committing journalism,” Stella Assange said. “This case criminalises journalism – journalistic activity, standard journalistic activity of news gathering, and publishing. And so this is the reality of this prosecution.
“It’s the case should never have been brought. But the important thing is that Julian is free … And we can put this behind us.”
Julian Assange has not spoken publicly since his arrival in Canberra on Wednesday night and his wife said he would need time to recover before he did. She addressed journalists directly at a news conference in Parliament House on Thursday, urging them not to stop investigating the US’ handling of the case against her husband.
“Julian isn’t allowed to request freedom of information, make information requests [to] the US government,” Stella Assange said. “But you can and I encourage you to … so please do.”
Assange’s plea deal contained a separate condition, inserted at the US government’s insistence, that the Australian publisher delete any unpublished US information still in his possession or being held by WikiLeaks or its affiliates.
His US lawyer, Barry Pollack, said the material which WikiLeaks published was now more than a decade old and he did not know whether any more unpublished documents remained in their possession. But he confirmed Assange had done as required.
“In fact, the United States in court in Saipan yesterday conceded – and the judge found – that there is no evidence that any harm has befallen any individual anywhere in the world as a result of Mr Assange’s publications,” Pollack said.
“That being said, they did insist that he issue an instruction to the editor of WikiLeaks to destroy any materials they might have that were not published and Julian has complied with that provision.”
Stella Assange said her husband was “overjoyed and so grateful” to the Australian public and to those across the political spectrum, including those in opposition and government, who campaigned for his release.
She called it “quite unique, that it got people together from all sides, to work towards Julian’s freedom and to keep it at the top of the agenda for years now.”
“… I think the whole world celebrated with us. It was us meeting on the tarmac but it was the entire world who was celebrating.”
But that sense of unity fractured on Thursday, when the shadow foreign minister, Simon Birmingham, accused Anthony Albanese of having wrongly feted Assange, saying the prime minister’s phone call to the WikiLeaks publisher as he touched down in Australia was inappropriate.
Birmingham was objecting to Albanese equating the negotiated plea deal for Assange and his subsequent release with the return of Australian economic adviser and political prisoner Sean Turnell from Myanmar and journalist Cheng Lei from China.
“The idea that that Julian Assange should be held up and treated and feted in the same type of way as Australians who have genuinely been held as political prisoners, who have genuinely been arbitrarily detained by regimes that don’t offer that type of transparency – there is absolutely no comparison between the two,” Birmingham told ABC Radio National on Thursday morning.
He suggested Assange and WikiLeaks had been reckless in publishing entire documents without redactions.
“This wasn’t an act of heroism,” he said. “It was simply an act of somebody who was happy to take any and all information given to him and publish it. That’s not what you do on the ABC and it’s not what any other responsible journalist would do.”
Birmingham also suggested that Albanese’s public support for Assange had damaged Australia’s alliance with the US and that some in the US Congress would “think very poorly” of Albanese for welcoming him home. The foreign minister, Penny Wong, rejected that.
Wong said: “He [Birmingham] would know that our relationship with the United States is deep and strong and that is why we were able to advocate in the way we did.”
Julian Assange’s longest-serving lawyer, Australian Jennifer Robinson, said Assange had exposed US war crimes and then been punished for acting in the public interest. She rebuked Birmingham for his observations.
“It is entirely appropriate for the Australian prime minister to call an Australian citizen who has been through what Julian’s been through and had just touched down in Australia,” Robinson told journalists on Thursday.
“To suggest that looking after an Australian citizen … who has been through so much could damage our alliance is, I think, wrong.”
She claimed Birmingham “needs to get his priorities straight”.
