'Enough is enough': How Australia's quiet diplomacy led Julian Assange to freedom

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange outside the US District Court in Saipan after a hearing on June 26.

“This work has been complex and it has been considered. This is what standing up for Australians around the world looks like,” Mr Albanese, leader of a centre-left Labor government, told Parliament on June 26. Mr Shipton told Reuters the Australian government had been “nothing short of magnificent” and praised former prime minister Kevin Rudd and former defence minister Stephen Smith, Australia’s top envoys to the US and Britain.

One government official who did not want to be identified said the first big break came in January 2021, when then shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus issued a statement calling for the case against Mr Assange to end after a British court found that it would be unjust to extradite him to the US. Mr Smith visited Mr Assange in Belmarsh Prison in April 2023, the first such visit by Australia’s top UK diplomat since he was imprisoned four years earlier.

But it was the UK High Court’s decision in May to allow Mr Assange to appeal against his extradition that triggered the breakthrough in negotiations over a plea deal, according to his wife Stella.

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