Sydney, Apr. 14 (ANI): Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr has said the idea that the United States wishes to extradite Julian Assange is "sheer fantasy".
Despite this, a report in the Sydney Morning Herald said that the Australian embassy in Washington is closely monitoring the prosecution of former US Army private Bradley Manning for leaking the information to WikiLeaks publisher Assange.
An Australian diplomatic cable released to Fairfax Media under a freedom of information law shows an Australian embassy staffer attended the pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade Maryland on February 27-28 at which Private Manning pleaded guilty to leaking thousands of secret documents to WikiLeaks.
The Australian embassy has been the only foreign embassy in Washington to regularly attend hearings in the Manning case.
The Washington embassy's reporting to Canberra on the pre-trial proceedings has focussed closely on references to Assange including most recently private Manning's admission that he had been "communicating over a long period of time with someone he assumed was a senior member of WikiLeaks (to whom he gave the chat handle 'Nathaniel Frank')".
The Embassy further highlighted private Manning's statement that he assumed his WikiLeaks contact "was either Julian Assange or 'Schmitt' (the pseudonym for Daniel Domsheit-Berg, former WikiLeaks number 2), but he didn't know for sure".
The Embassy also noted Manning's assertion that WikiLeaks did not encourage him to leak information. However further text relating to this statement has been redacted by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on the grounds that disclosure would undermine the capacity of Australian officials to engage with foreign interlocutors and impact adversely on Australia's relations with other countries.
The department has also withheld information relating to court arrangements for prosecution witnesses to testify in secret when private Manning's court martial for further offences, including the charge of aiding the enemy, takes place in June.
Last week, Trial Judge Colonel Denise Lind ruled that a member of the US Navy Seal team that raided Osama Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, would be allowed as a witness in court.
Assange currently resides in the Embassy of Ecuador in London where he has been granted political asylum on the grounds he is at risk of extradition to the US to face conspiracy or other charges arising from WikiLeaks obtaining classified information from private Manning. (ANI)
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