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Speaker 1: You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker

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Speaker 1: every morning to hear the latest episode. Just say play

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Speaker 1: the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's

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Speaker 1: on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Wednesday, June twenty

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Speaker 1: sixth back renewables all prepare to be plunged into darkness.

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Speaker 1: That's the warning to regional communities which could face blackouts

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Speaker 1: when coal exits the electricity grid in the late twenty thirties,

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Speaker 1: according to a new roadmap from the Australian Energy Market Operator.

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Speaker 1: A fresh drama for the Labor government, with one of

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Speaker 1: its own senators crossing the floor for the first time

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Speaker 1: in decades to vote against Labor. Senator Fatima Payman defied

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Speaker 1: party leadership on immediate recognition of Palestinian statehood. Historically, members

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Speaker 1: who cross the floor have been expelled from the party,

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Speaker 1: but it's looking like payment we'll keep her job. You

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Speaker 1: can read Dennis Shanahan's expert analysis right now at the

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Speaker 1: Australian dot com. Dot Wikileg's founder Julian Assange is on

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Speaker 1: his way to Australia after pleading guilty to an espionage

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Speaker 1: charge in order to get out of jail. Today we

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Speaker 1: go back to the beginning, the allegations of rape that

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Speaker 1: sent Assange on the rump, and how this hacker recast

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Speaker 1: himself as a crusader for freedom. Before we begin, this

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Speaker 1: episode contains allegations of sexual assault. Back in twenty ten,

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Speaker 1: Assange was a figure of international intrigue, the swashbuckling hacker

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Speaker 1: turned publisher whose website WikiLeaks was dumping thousands of documents

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Speaker 1: into the public domain, highly damaging secret military files that

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Speaker 1: exposed the inner workings of America's war in Afghanistan. And

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Speaker 1: then Assange was accused of rape while he was working

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Speaker 1: in Sweden. Two young Swedish women who had met him

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Speaker 1: in wikileak circles accused Assange of having sex with them

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Speaker 1: without using a condom without their consent. One was Anna Ardin.

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Speaker 1: She had hosted Assange in her home and the pair

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Speaker 1: had sex in which she said Assange deliberately ripped a

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Speaker 1: condom she'd asked him to wear and was violent towards

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Speaker 1: her during sex. Assange denied both those allegations. Julian Sane

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Speaker 1: men to Scoff, but I don't have a shawning. In

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Speaker 1: this interview with Swedish paper Zvenska. Doug Bladette Ardin, who's

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Speaker 1: written a book about her allegations, said this, we've used

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Speaker 1: a voice actor to bring you the translation of her words.

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Speaker 2: I'm happy to forgive Julian a sane, but I can't

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Speaker 2: create this reconciliation myself. I did my best to get

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Speaker 2: this thing tried in court, but he stayed away. It

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Speaker 2: affected my life immensely.

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Speaker 1: In the beginning.

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Speaker 2: I had to quit my job, I had to move

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Speaker 2: out of my apartment. I was even hidden abroad for

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Speaker 2: a period. I also got a lot of support and

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Speaker 2: it's helped me move on and I think I've become

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Speaker 2: a stronger person in this process.

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Speaker 1: Another woman known only as Miss W had consensual sex

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Speaker 1: with Assane using a condom, but said she had awoken

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Speaker 1: the following morning to find him having sex with her again,

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Speaker 1: this time without the condom she'd asked him to use.

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Speaker 1: This action removing a condom is now known as stealthing,

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Speaker 1: and over the past decade has been formally criminalized throughout

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Speaker 1: Australia and much of the western world. In Queensland, this

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Speaker 1: offense carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Assange

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Speaker 1: has always denied wrongdoing and said his contact with the

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Speaker 1: women was consensual. He was questioned by local police, but

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Speaker 1: he left Sweden for the UK before he could be charged.

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Speaker 1: Swedish authorities formally arrested him in absentia in September twenty ten.

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Speaker 1: Swedish courts issued a European arrest warrant and the international

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Speaker 1: policing agency INTERPOL issued a Red Notice, a note to

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Speaker 1: police around the world indicating a person is wanted for extradition. Assange,

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Speaker 1: by now in London, was arrested by London's Metropolitan Police

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Speaker 1: and remanded in custody, whereupon numerous supporters, including Jemima Kahn,

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Speaker 1: helped him post hundreds of thousands of dollars in bail.

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Speaker 1: British courts issued an extradition warrant, rejecting Assange's arguments the

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Speaker 1: Swedish prosecution was politically motivated. Assange appealed to Britain's High Court.

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Speaker 1: His lawyers argued the women had consented to sex, and

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Speaker 1: that his conduct might have been unpleasant, but if committed

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Speaker 1: in London, would not have been a crime. His lawyer,

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Speaker 1: ben Emerson Casey said Assange may have seemed disreputable discourteous,

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Speaker 1: disturbing or even pushing towards the boundaries of what they

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Speaker 1: were comfortable with. But he was not a criminal. He's

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Speaker 1: a voice actor. With ben Emerson Casey's words as spoken

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Speaker 1: in court. He's speaking about the second woman who says

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Speaker 1: she awoke to find Assange having sex with her without

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Speaker 1: a condom.

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Speaker 3: She may not have enjoyed the experience, but she clearly

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Speaker 3: consented to it.

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Speaker 1: The High Court rejected Assange's arguments, ruling Swedish authorities could

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Speaker 1: order his return to Sweden. Assange was defiant.

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Speaker 4: I have not been charged with any crime in any country.

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Speaker 4: No doubt there will be many attempts made to try

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Speaker 4: and spin these proceedings as they occur today, but they

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Speaker 4: are merely technical.

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Speaker 1: While all this was going on, WikiLeaks continued. In twenty eleven,

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Speaker 1: the Walkley Foundation in Australia gave Wikiliks and Assange an

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Speaker 1: award for an Outstanding Contribution to Journalism after they published

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Speaker 1: a video showing American forces killing civilians and to Reutter's

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Speaker 1: journalists in Baghdad that sparked a fierce debate. Was this

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Speaker 1: accused rapist and self proclaimed crusader actually the journalist at all.

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Speaker 1: James Madden is the Australian's Media editor.

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Speaker 5: I think it's cut and dried. Actually, Claire, I do

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Speaker 5: not believe what wikiliks does can be considered journalism, for

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Speaker 5: the simple fact that journalists have an obligation to the

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Speaker 5: readers and the public to present information in its relevant context.

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Speaker 5: That is a responsibility that falls upon the shoulders of

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Speaker 5: journalists and media companies and news outlets, and Wikilik's mo

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Speaker 5: has today simply been obtaining documents and publishing them trives

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Speaker 5: of documents at a time, without sifting through these documents

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Speaker 5: to present the information within in journalism form.

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Speaker 1: Wikiliks prided itself on presenting entire cases of material without

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Speaker 1: editing or redaction. That meant the most sensitive diplomatic communications

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Speaker 1: were suddenly out in the open, including the names of

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Speaker 1: human rights leaders, dissidents, spies, informants and others who were

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Speaker 1: secretly dealing with the US in places like Iraq. In

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Speaker 1: twenty ten, human rights organizations including Amnesty International begged WikiLeaks

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Speaker 1: to redact the names of Afghans who were working with

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Speaker 1: the Americans after the Taliban said it was going through

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Speaker 1: the documents on WikiLeaks to identify and eliminate collaborators.

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Speaker 5: That information or that fact. Claire doesn't always garner a

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Speaker 5: lot of publicity when defenders of Assange are talking about

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Speaker 5: the merits of his and Wikiliks journalism, But the truth

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Speaker 5: is professional journalists take extraordinary steps to defend the privacy

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Speaker 5: and by extension, the safety of people about whom they're writing,

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Speaker 5: and a lot of consideration goes into presenting information in

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Speaker 5: a responsible way.

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Speaker 1: Then Assange went into hiding, and unlike most people accused

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Speaker 1: of being sex offenders, he was suddenly hailed as a hero.

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Speaker 1: Assange claimed he was afraid that the Swedish judicial process

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Speaker 1: could end in him being extradited to the United States

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Speaker 1: over all those classified US documents. In twenty twelve, he

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Speaker 1: sought asylum in the London embassy of Ecuador, a South

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Speaker 1: American republic, and that's where he stayed for seven years

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Speaker 1: in the embassy, refusing to emerge in case he was

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Speaker 1: arrested and sent back to Sweden to face the rape charges.

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Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, after much legal back and forth, Sweden

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Speaker 1: dropped the charges, saying too much time had expired. Although

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Speaker 1: the women have never recanted their claims, Assange was triumphant.

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Speaker 4: Seven years without charge. Why my children grew up without them?

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Speaker 4: That is not something that I can forgive.

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Speaker 1: Yeah children. It later emerged Assigne had formed a romance

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Speaker 1: with a Swedish Spanish woman, Stella Morris, and fathered two

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Speaker 1: kids while inside the embassy.

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Speaker 6: He's not a criminal, he's not a dangerous person. He's

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Speaker 6: a gentle intellectual, a center and a journalist. And those

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Speaker 6: people are not the people who belong in prison.

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Speaker 1: In April twenty nineteen, the Ecuadorians revoked his asylum. They

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Speaker 1: said Assanch had been a terrible HouseGuest, abusing staff, hacking

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Speaker 1: into their computer systems, meddling in Ecuador's relationships with other countries,

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Speaker 1: and even leaving the feces of his cat and himself

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Speaker 1: on the floors and walls of the embassy. The Metropolitan

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Speaker 1: Police stormed the embassy and dragged Assange out, a bizarre

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Speaker 1: scene on the quiet streets of London. As Assian shouted

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Speaker 1: the UK must resist pressure to extradite him, Scotland Yard

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Speaker 1: arrested him for failing to appear in court over the

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Speaker 1: rape allegation. Until now, the US had not moved on

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Speaker 1: Assange at all, but in twenty nineteen, once he was

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Speaker 1: out of the embassy. The Americans finally revealed they did

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Speaker 1: want him. He'd been indicted by a US grand jury

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Speaker 1: for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. Coming up, how Julian

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Speaker 1: Assange recast himself as not an accused rapist but a

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Speaker 1: freedom fighter. At the Australian dot Com dot a U

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Speaker 1: right now, we've got a range of wildly differing opinions

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Speaker 1: about Assange. You can check out our contest of ideas

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Speaker 1: and make up your own mind by joining ours subscribers

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Speaker 1: at the Australian dot com dot a U. We'll be

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Speaker 1: back after this break. Bellmarsh is the maximum security prison

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Speaker 1: where Julian Assange has been for the past nineteen hundred

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Speaker 1: and one days, just over five years. His family and

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Speaker 1: advocates have complained Tossange's mental and physical health were under

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Speaker 1: desperate strain, so why was he in jail? Initially, he

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Speaker 1: was sentenced to fifty weeks for breaching bail over the

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Speaker 1: Swedish rape allegations. British prosecutors said he'd illegally entered the

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Speaker 1: embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden. Assange released a statement

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Speaker 1: apologizing for his conduct. We've used a voice actor.

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Speaker 2: I apologize unreservedly to those who consider that I have

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Speaker 2: disrespected them by the way I have pursued my case.

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Speaker 1: This is not what I wanted or intended. In early

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Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, after about a month behind bars, Assiange was

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Speaker 1: charged with an additional seventeen counts under the United States

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Speaker 1: Espionage Act relating to hundreds of thousands of leaked classified

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Speaker 1: US documents covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And

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Speaker 1: in twenty.

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Speaker 3: Twenty, Julian Assange has been a denied bill by a

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Speaker 3: judge at a London court. The Wikileagu's founder was hoping

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Speaker 3: to leave prison two days after the same judge rejected

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Speaker 3: a request for extradition to the United States.

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Speaker 1: The judge that Assange couldn't be trusted to show up

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Speaker 1: in court if he was given bail, and ordered him

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Speaker 1: to remain in Belmarsh while the extradition proceedings played out. Then,

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Speaker 1: in December twenty twenty one, another twist.

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Speaker 3: Julian Assanji is a step closer to being extradited to America.

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Speaker 2: After the US government one it's bid to overturn a

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Speaker 2: UK court decision.

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Speaker 1: Assange appealed to the UK Supreme Court and failed. In

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Speaker 1: April twenty two, the US got its wish. A British

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Speaker 1: court has issued an order to extradite Wiki Leagues founder

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Speaker 1: Julian Assange to the United States. If convicted on all charges,

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Speaker 1: Assange faced up to one hundred and seventy five years

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Speaker 1: in an American prison. Just a month ago, another British

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Speaker 1: court granted Assange one last chance to appeal the extradition order,

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Speaker 1: and then on Sunday a deal was announced. Assange agreed

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Speaker 1: to plead guilty to one charge of espionage, conspiring to

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Speaker 1: unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information. He was

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Speaker 1: released from Bellmarsh and bordered a plane to Saipan in

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Speaker 1: the Northern Mariana Islands, a US Pacific territory, where a

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Speaker 1: judge will handle the formalities. That was also part of

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Speaker 1: the negotiation to avoid Assange setting foot on the US mainland.

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Speaker 1: The Americans have agreed to drop eighteen espionage charges against

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Speaker 1: Assange and he'll be sentenced to sixty two months in prison,

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Speaker 1: but his time already served in Belmarsh will be counted.

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Speaker 1: It's expected that after sentencing, he'll leave the Marianas for Australia.

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Speaker 1: His homeland. The Albanesi government, which is campaigned for his release,

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Speaker 1: will welcome Massange. In the US, the Biden administration, which

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Speaker 1: continued Donald Trump's pursuit of Massange, will be relieved to

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Speaker 1: see the last of him. And the big question what

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Speaker 1: now for the hacker turned activist who says he's only

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Speaker 1: ever sought to expose the truth. Thanks for joining us

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Speaker 1: on the front. You can check out all our journalism

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Speaker 1: right now at the Australian dot com dot a U