Assange’s Expensive Flight to Freedom: $700K Ticket

Julian Assange’s 15-year battle against a US administration determined to see him either dead or locked away forever for exposing American war crimes now faces another challenge.

The fight for Assange's freedom has taken a new twist. His release from Belmarsh prison in the UK, heading straight to Stansted Airport where a private jet awaited his arrival, would have been a liberating walk, one he had envisioned repeatedly.

It’s a day Assange thought might never come, but it has, and now he is a free man. But hope is a powerful thing. Assange’s vision of walking out of prison to an airport would have also sustained his fight, that one day he would walk free in defiance of those who sought to kill him.

Telling the truth, exposing the criminality of the US and its war crimes cost Assange a price he should never have had to pay. But it did. To return home to Australia and leave Belmarsh, Assange’s legal team negotiated a deal to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information. In exchange, he received a sentence of time served, which accounted for the 62 months he spent in a British prison.

But the issue of paying a cost hasn’t ended with Assange’s freedom. It now comes at another price - $700,000. It’s another battle in the long line of battles Assange has had to endure. Nobody could blame him for thinking the nightmare being enacted on him isn’t only relentless but isn’t going to stop.

The generosity of the UK and US governments hasn’t stopped with the torture and dehumanisation they have subjected Assange to for the past 15 years, it appears that isn’t enough. There’s more.

Assange now faces another battle, and that is paying for the private jet that the Assange team had to charter to fly him from the UK to Bangkok and then to the Marianas where his plea deal was signed off on and on then he was off to Canberra courtesy of the UK and Australian governments.

The half a million-dollar price tag now straddled onto Assange is not only unacceptably disgraceful, it seems the UK and US governments are determined to make Assange’s life as difficult as they can, even though he is no longer imprisoned in Belmarsh and in the custody of the UK authorities.

Punishing Assange through financial stress highlights just how ruthless the UK and US governments are prepared to be. Imposing a $700,000 bill seems to be another way to make life even more difficult for Assange. It’s as though the 15-years of hell he’s had to endure wasn’t enough.

Assange is now expected to cover the cost of the charter flight to Saipan and then back to Australia, a cost the UK and American governments have requested the Australian federal government to pay. The Australian government is now passing the costs of the charter flight back onto Assange.

Flying Assange back home to Australia should never have required a chartered flight; instead, the Australian government should have sent the RAAF Prime Ministerial jet to the UK to bring Assange back to Australian shores courtesy of the government. That would have been the right thing to do. But why they didn’t is anybody’s guess?

To make good on a missed opportunity and not burden Assange with more than half-a-million-dollar bill, the Federal government must now rectify its lost chance to appear committed to Assange’s total freedom and gain moral high ground by wiping that bill.

This is one taxpayer-funded expense Australians would have been happy to cover. Instead, Assange, to meet the cost, has raised the money through donations already needed to pay the hefty bill.

It is a cost Julian Assange shouldn’t have had to bear. However, the Australian government must see this as an opportunity to make good on a matter that sees one of history’s most significant figures not be burdened by an expense he can ill-afford to pay. It’s a bill however, the Australian government can afford to wear.

Five Australian Prime Ministers let Assange rot and be hunted with one prepared to allow him to be assassinated. Australia and the world owe Julian Assange an enormous debt.

Assange has paid enough, and he is owed more than the world can ever afford to give. Expecting him to pay a $700,000 bill is insulting to his legacy, when instead Prime Minister Anthony Albanese could have sent the PM’s jet to collect him.

It's obvious, the PM and his advisors failed to understand the sense of theatre that came with bringing Assange home.