President Joe Biden said Wednesday he is considering ending the prosecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
In February, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese requested an end to Assange’s years-long persecution and return to his native Australia.
Biden will receive a fellow Quad member, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, at the White House on Wednesday for an official state visit.
“We are 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 in custody in Britain.
President Joe Biden (right) said he was “considering” ending the prosecution of Julian Assange at Australia’s request. He answered a question about this as he walked Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (left) into the Oval Office on Wednesday
In February, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (left) asked the US to drop charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (right) and send him back to his native Australia. He is currently in prison in Britain
Thursday will mark five years since Assange was in British custody.
Assange is facing espionage charges in the United States after his 2010 publication of classified U.S. military intelligence material, including footage of U.S. airstrikes in Baghdad, diplomatic cables and secret communications about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
One video showed a US military helicopter killing civilians in Baghdad including two Reuters journalists, who mistook camera equipment for weapons.
Wikileaks obtained 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, called Assange a ‘high-tech terroristin a December 2010 interview on Meet the Press.
Assange was first arrested in London in 2010 as he was wanted for questioning by the Swede, who was accused of rape and sexual assault by two women.
In 2012, he was granted 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 home and arrested Assange.
He was charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion in connection with his involvement with Manning, a 2018 charge that had previously been unsealed.
The Justice Department added seventeen espionage charges to the case in May 2018.
The charge 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 made efforts to have him extradited to the US to face these charges.
In February, the Australian parliament passed a motion to return Assange to Australia instead of sending him to the US
Albanians supported 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 for Australia to interfere in the legal processes of other countries, but it is appropriate that we express our very strong view that those countries should take into account the need to complete this,” Albanese said in February. “No matter where people stand, this thing can’t go on forever.”