MOSCOW, January 14 (Sputnik) — Lawyer and activist Kellie Tranter's open letter to the Australian Senate on the 1500th day of Julian Assange's detention urges the country's lawmakers to act in support of the whistleblower.
"If all rights that citizens have flow from freedom of thought and speech – as the global response to the tragedy in France confirms – it is hard to think of a more important issue for which the Senate should again go to the barricades than the plight of Mr. Assange," the letter, published on Tranter's website, read.
"Pentagon's special assessment team looking over the WikiLeaks Afghanistan war logs found nothing that could damage national security," the activist added.
Kellie Tranter ran for Australia's Senate as a candidate from Assange's WikiLeaks Party in the 2013 federal elections. That year, the Australian government decided to stop making representations to the United States on Assange's case.
WikiLeaks founder and Australian citizen, Julian Assange has published scores of classified diplomatic and military documents from governments around the world, most notably the United States, over the past several years.
Since June 2012, Assange has taken refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, when the British court ruled to extradite him to Sweden on charges of alleged sexual assault. Assange claimed the extradition to Sweden was a ploy to hand him over to the United States, where he would be charged for publishing classified information.
To date, Swedish investigators have failed to question Assange on the grounds that it is counterproductive to travel to London to question a suspect.
