After it was revealed that Julian Assange may be extradited from the UK to the US and face 175 years in prison, Jack Posobiec hosted Australian Senator Alex Antic Friday on Human Events to talk about his push to US officials to release him.
Julian Assange famously founded WikiLeaks back in 2006.
Posobiec reminded his audience that Assange was apprehended and charged in the US for merely posting and reporting on government documents that were given to him by a source, what Posobiec calls the act of journalism.
Antic, along with fellow Australian lawmakers Barnaby Joyce, Tony Zappia, Monique Ryan, Peter Whish-Wilson, and David Shoebridge, traveled to DC on Friday to ask US lawmakers to drop the charges against Assange and to prevent him from being extradited from the UK.
They brought with them, a letter signed by over 60 members of the Australian parliament calling for the US to drop charges against Assange.
He said of the politically diverse group, “we’ve had people on this delegation that wouldn’t agree on anything…except the plight of Julian Assange.”
“We’re here with the purpose of taking the message to United States lawmakers…that Australians overwhelmingly want to see Julian Assange home,” Antic continued, reminding the audience that the journalist has a wife and two kids he has not seen as a free man their entire lives.
He quoted a statistic that “9 out of 10 Australians believe that Julian should be brought home.”
Assange has been formally charged in the US for stealing and publishing government documents but is waiting for a final ruling in the UK, Posobiec said.
He asked Antic what he is specifically asking for when he says “bring [Assange] back to Australia.”
Antic stated that Assange is an Australian citizen.
“Ultimately, if we’re going to become world citizens and be able to say that we support free journalism, then this could happen to anyone anywhere.”
“How can the United States complain about the treatment of its own prisoners overseas when we’re in circumstances where we’re really seeing an Australian citizen being detained for things that he didn’t even consider on American soil?” Antic asked.
He reported, “we’re led to believe through his lawyers that the decision on whether or not to extradite Julian could happen at any day,” but without the charges there would be no extradition, which is what they are in DC to challenge at the moment.
Posobiec explained that Julian Assange’s source for the government documents was a former soldier, Bradley Manning who now goes by Chelsea Manning, whose charges were commuted by Obama when he left office.
Antic agreed that “the person that ultimately was charged and convicted of the offense is a free person.”
“And yet Julian has spent the last 10 or 11 years of his life in one form of solitary confinement.” Antic noted that the prison Assange is being kept in in Belmarsh has difficult conditions and that it is “effectively a UK supermax prison.”
He predicted that should Assange be extradited to the US, he would be kept in a supermax prison as well, where the likes of the Unabomber and “top level criminals and convicts and terrorists” go.
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