US Has Been After Assange, After All
The declassified diplomatic cables, released under freedom of information legislation, show Australia’s ambassador, the former Labor leader Kim Beazley, has made high level representations to the US government asking for advance warning of any moves to prosecute Assange.
Senator Carr has repeatedly dismissed suggestions that the US has any interest in prosecuting and extraditing Assange. In June, Senator Carr also told the ABC Insiders program: ‘I’ve received no hint that they’ve got a plan to extradite him … I would expect that the US would not want to touch this.”
However, the Australian embassy in Washington reported in February that ‘the US investigation into possible criminal conduct by Mr Assange has been ongoing for more than a year’.
The embassy identified a wide range of criminal charges the US could bring against Assange, including espionage, conspiracy, unlawful access to classified information and computer fraud.