‘I have already been cleared’: Assange

Julian Assange has used his appearance at the Bendigo Writers Festival to address the controversy surrounding allegations of sexual assault made against him in Sweden.

Mr Assange made a point of speaking about the issue, despite interviewer Robert Manne’s initial reluctance, in a live cross from the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

“The situation is this, there is one allegation, there are no charges, there have never been charges,” he said.

“In relation to this precise allegation, I have already been cleared by the chief prosecutor of Stockholm, back in 2010, who found that no crime had been committed whatsoever.”

Mr Assange said the remaining allegation was only in the preliminary stages of investigation, and pointed out the United Nations had since declared his effective detention by the United Kingdom government in the Ecuadorian embassy to be unlawful.

“After the [original] preliminary investigation was closed and I was formally found to be innocent, it was reopened after the intervention of a politician,” he said.

“It’s been at the stage of preliminary investigation ever since.”

But even in the event he is ultimately cleared by Swedish authorities, Mr Assange said he would remain unable to leave the embassy where he has been living since being grated asylum by Ecuador in 2012.

Asked by Professor Manne how confident he was he would be allowed to go free if the Swedish charges were dropped, Mr Assange was unequivocal.

“I'm 100 per cent confident that I would not be a free person because the British government has said, regardless of whether the Swedes drop the case or not, they’re going to arrest me,” he said.

“The UK government also refuses to confirm or deny whether there is already a US extradition request.”

It was fears he could be extradited from Sweden to the United States on charges relating to espionage and terrorism that led Mr Assange to seek asylum, rather than face questioning in Stockholm.

And despite his impending arrest by British authorities, Mr Assange said he favoured his chances of not being extradited to the US by the UK government as slightly better than with Sweden.

“The Swedes have extradited every single person that the US has asked for since at least the year 2000, they have a 100 per cent extradition rate to the United States,” he said.

“The UK has a 90 per cent extradition rate.”

Mr Assange was also critical of the US government in pursuing charges against him, despite not being a US citizen, nor having been alleged to have committed a crime on US soil.

“We have the United States asserting jurisdiction over an Australian not in the Unite States, asserting jurisdiction over web servers and publishing operations in Europe and Australia,” he said.

Despite the controversy surrounding the allegations against Mr Assange, the packed Ulumbarra Theatre crowd was largely sympathetic, delivering rousing applause at various points in the discussion.

Castlemaine’s Justin Eales said he had come away with a more favourable view of the Wikileaks founder.

“I was a bit in doubt about him to an extent, and hearing him talk so passionately and eloquently about his cause certainly swayed me somewhat,” he said.

“At the start of the talk when he was talking about his motivations, it’s pretty hard to disagree with all of that stuff.”

Mr Eales said he was not in a position to judge the veracity of the sexual assault allegations against Mr Assange, but was open to the possibility they were politically motivated.

“You can’t totally know the situation so I'm not 100 per cent convinced one way or the other, but his willingness to talk about it certainly puts a couple of points in his favour,” he said.

“It’s quite clear that something like that could be politically motivated.”

Overall, Mr Eales said he thought the decision to include Mr Assange was a good move by festival organisers.

“For me the festival has mainly been about ideas, they say it’s writers but it’s mainly about ideas and how people get those across,” he said.

“He’s obviously a man with lots of important ideas, he wants to change the world and he’s had a pretty bloody good crack at it so far.”

Bendigo woman Kate Fraser chose not to attend the session, but also backed the decision to include Mr Assange in the festival line up.

“I think it’s appropriate, I wouldn’t be at all surprised that some of that controversy has been whipped up in order to silence him because I think that’s actually how some of the major political systems do work,” she said.

“I really agree with the sort of work that Julian Assange has done but I actually find him a pain in the neck.”