Biden is considering Australia's request to drop charges against Assange

US President Joe Biden said he was considering a request from Australia to stop prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The country's parliament – backed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – recently passed a measure calling for Mr Assange's return to his native Australia.

The USA wants to extradite the 52-year-old from Great Britain on charges of passing on military documents.

Mr Assange denies the allegations and says the leaks were an act of journalism.

The president was asked about Australia's request on Wednesday and said: “We're thinking about it.”

The measure was passed by the Australian Parliament in February. Mr Albanese told MPs: “People will have different views on Mr Assange's behavior… But no matter where people stand, this thing cannot just go on and on and on.”

Mr Assange, 52, is fighting his extradition in the British courts.

Extradition was stayed in March after London's Supreme Court said the United States needed to provide assurances that he would not face the death penalty.

The Supreme Court is due to evaluate any responses from the US authorities at the end of May.

In a post on Twitter/X directed at Mr Biden, Assange's wife Stella said: “Do the right thing. Drop the charges.”

Kristinn Hrafnsson, the current editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, said it was “not too late” for the president to stop the extradition attempt, which he said was a “politically motivated act” by Mr. Biden’s predecessor.

U.S. prosecutors want to try the WikiLeaks founder on 18 counts, almost all under the Espionage Act, over the publication of confidential U.S. military documents and diplomatic communications related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mr Assange founded the website Wikileaks in 2006. It claims to have published more than ten million documents, including many classified or classified official reports on war, espionage and corruption.

In 2010, she released a video from a US military helicopter that showed the killing of civilians in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

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Thousands of confidential documents provided by former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning were also released.

These indicate that the US military killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents during the war in Afghanistan.

Manning gave the files to Wikileaks in 2010. She was later sentenced to 35 years in prison, but former President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017.

The U.S. Department of Justice called the leaks “one of the largest compromises of classified information in United States history.”

Mr Assange has been in Belmarsh Prison in London for five years, awaiting a series of legal challenges.

He had previously sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years.

There was initially a Swedish arrest warrant against him, in which he was accused of raping a woman and sexually abusing another. He denied the claims.

In 2019, Swedish authorities dropped the case after he was indicted under the US charges, saying too much time had passed since the original complaint.