US President Joe Biden said Wednesday he was “considering” a request from Australia to abandon the decade-long US attempt to prosecute the WikiLeaks founder. Australia has called on the United States to drop its prosecution against Assange.
Assange's supporters say he is a journalist protected by the First Amendment. The last hope comes on the eve of the fifth anniversary of Assange's imprisonment in Belmarsh prison in London. The Australian citizen, who has fought US extradition efforts from a prison in the United Kingdom, has fought for asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he is seeking asylum from the U.S. US prosecutors allege that Assange, 52, “encouraged and assisted US military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to steal diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks published, putting lives at risk” Australia maintains there is a disconnect between the US's treatment of Assange and Manning, who was commuted to a seven-year sentence to release in 2017. The WikiLeaks founder's wife, Stella, has said the founder is being treated like a criminal.