Key Points
- Assange was arrested in 2019 after spending seven years holed up in Ecuador's London embassy.
- UK courts previously blocked his extradition, but the High Court reversed the decision on appeal in 2021.
- Assange's lawyers are now appealing on grounds including that the decades-long prison sentence he faces is "disproportionate".
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he has worked with Julian Assange's legal team to strategise how to free the WikiLeaks founder.
Assange faces his final appeal in the UK against extradition to the US, but was described as too unwell to attend the start of the two-day hearing in London.
He published a huge trove of classified US military secrets more than a decade ago and has been detained in Belmarsh, a high security prison in the UK, since 2019.
Albanese said he had raised Assange's case at the highest levels with the US and UK, and had privately made his views known that the pursuit of him had been enough.
"It's time Julian Assange was brought home," he told ABC Radio Sydney.
"I've engaged with his legal team on a regular basis as well, on a strategy to try to get through this and come out the other side in Assange's interests."
Stella Assange likened her husband's case to that of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition activist who died in prison on Friday while serving a three-decade sentence.
"Julian is a political prisoner and his life is at risk. What happened to Navalny can happen to Julian," she told reporters outside court where a large crowd called for his release.
On the first of two days of evidence before two High Court judges, the 52-year-old's leading lawyer said previous rulings contained "errors of law" and that the US charges against him are "political".
"There is a real risk that he will suffer flagrant denial of justice" if sent to the US, Edward Fitzgerald KC, one of Assange's lawyers, argued.
Earlier, Fitzgerald told the judges that Assange was "not well today" and would not attend in person or via video.
Albanese said his government was using diplomatic channels to try to secure Assange's release, and had raised the issue with US President Joe Biden.
Assange's legal team claim he faces the risk of a denial of justice if tried in the US.
In 2012, he took refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London and was granted political asylum that year.
Assange remained in the embassy until 2019 when Ecuador revoked his political asylum.
The same year the US Justice Department formally requested the UK extradite Assange to their country to face charges he conspired to hack government computers and violated an espionage law.
During a visit to Australia as part of high-level talks, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Assange was accused of "very serious criminal conduct".
The Albanese government has been advocating for the US pursuit of Assange to end.
