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President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he is considering ending the prosecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
In February, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called for Assange’s years-long prosecution to end and for him to be returned to his native Australia.
Biden will host a member of the Quad, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, at the White House on Wednesday for an official state visit.
“We’re considering it,” Biden told reporters when asked about Assange as he walked with Kishida along the White House colonnade after Wednesday’s welcoming ceremony on the South Lawn.
Assange is detained in the United Kingdom.
President Joe Biden (R) said he was “considering” ending the prosecution of Julian Assange at Australia’s request. He answered a question about it as he accompanied Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (left) to the Oval Office on Wednesday.
In February, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (left) requested that the United States drop charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (right) and return him to his native Australia. He is currently in prison in the United Kingdom.
Thursday will mark five years since Assange was in British custody.
Assange faces espionage charges in the United States after his 2010 publication of classified US military intelligence material, including images of US airstrikes in Baghdad, diplomatic cables and classified communications from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
One video showed a US military helicopter. killing civilians in Baghdad including two Reuters journalists, mistaking camera equipment for weapons.
Wikileaks received the information from former US Army intelligence officer Chelsea Manning, who was initially sentenced to 35 years in prison but was released in 2017 when President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.
Biden, then vice president, referred to Assange as a ‘high tech terrorist‘ in a December 2010 interview on Meet the Press.
Assange was first arrested in London in 2010, when he was wanted for questioning by Swedes, accused by two women of rape and sexual assault.
In 2012, he was granted a political amnesty at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and remained there – essentially imprisoned in the house – until 2019, when the Ecuadorians revoked his amnesty.
Supporters of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange protest outside the Australian High Commission in central London on Wednesday, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of his arrest by British police.
At that point, members of the London Metropolitan Police entered the residence and arrested Assange.
He was charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion related to his relationship with Manning, a 2018 charge that had previously been revealed.
The Justice Department added 17 espionage charges to the case in May 2018.
The charges carried a maximum penalty of 170 years in prison.
And in June 2020, a grand jury expanded the indictment against Assange, alleging that he recruited and conspired with hackers to obtain information for Wikileaks.
Since then, Assange and his legal team have fought efforts to extradite him to the United States to face these charges.
In February, Australia’s Parliament passed a motion for Assange to be returned to Australia rather than sent to the United States.
Albanese backed the move and had previously expressed frustration that Assange remained jailed while Manning, his source, has been free since 2017.
‘I hope this can be resolved. I hope it can be resolved amicably. It is not Australia’s place to interfere in the legal processes of other countries, but it is appropriate that we express our strong view that those countries should take into account the need for this to be concluded,” Albanese said in February. “Regardless of the position of the People, this can’t go on and on indefinitely.