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Australia pledges to push for Assange’s freedom, return home — prime minister

Anthony Albanese also said Canberra would continue to "work very closely" to bring the WikiLeaks founder back home

SYDNEY, May 21. /TASS/. The Australian authorities will continue to support WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and try to bring him back to the country, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

Commenting on the decision of the High Court of Justice to allow Assange to appeal the decision to extradite him to the United States, the prime minister said: "There's nothing to be served by the ongoing incarceration of Mr. Assange." "Our [Australian government's] position has been very clear <…>, which is enough is enough," Albanese told reporters in Sydney.

The Australian prime minister also said Canberra would continue to "work very closely" to bring the WikiLeaks founder back home.

According to Reuters, the judges of the High Court of Justice deemed that the assurances provided by the US authorities did not guarantee Assange's rights in case of his extradition. Assange, 52, was unable to attend the court hearing in person for health reasons.

Since 2019, Julian Assange has been held in the high-security Belmarsh prison, where he was placed after he was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in the UK capital. For more than five years, Washington has been pushing London to extradite him to the US, but Assange's defense has made more and more attempts to prevent that from happening. In June 2022, the then UK Home Secretary Priti Patel decided to extradite Assange following a review of his case by both the Westminster Magistrates' Court and the High Court of Justice, after which the appeals process began.

Assange is charged in the United States with crimes related to the largest disclosure of classified information in American history. He faces a total of 175 years in prison.

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