Truest statement of the week II

“There is a way out that I can see which requires a certain exercise of courage and decency on the part of an Australian government, whether this one or the next one, which is, I hope, coming very soon. And that is for the Australian government to, first of all, make aggressive representations in London to have Assange’s jumping-bail charge set aside because it’s really a very minor charge now, because the Swedish government has withdrawn all prosecution. He’s simply up on a technical charge of jumping bail in Britain.
Now it wouldn't be beyond the capacity of the Australian High Commissioner in London, our embassy there, to prevail on the British government to waive that or set it aside. The next step would be—and I don’t want to sound like a John Le Carré novel, but things happen—would be for the Australian High Commissioner to drive in his car to the Ecuador Embassy to pick up Assange, to drive him under the High Commissioner’s protection, possibly with a British police escort, straight to Heathrow, to the tarmac, and onto a waiting Australian Qantas plane, because we actually have a direct flight on Qantas, our national airline, from London to Perth without stops. And once Assange is on that plane, there is no way he could be touched by the Americans until he gets to Perth. It would then become an issue for the Australian government and the American government what to do with Assange. And I believe that no Australian government would dare to extradite Assange to the United States without a proper legal process, without a proper charge tested in an Australian court.”

-- Tony Kevin, quoted by Ann Garrison in "In the Crosshairs of the Washington Mafia: Venezuela and Julian Assange" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).