Assange open to political action as Cannes hosts doco

Hanna Rantala and Miranda Murray |

Julian Assange was at the Cannes Film Festival with wife Stella and film director Eugene Jarecki.
Julian Assange was at the Cannes Film Festival with wife Stella and film director Eugene Jarecki.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is thinking about how to become politically active again once he has fully recovered from prison, his wife Stella says.

The couple walked the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of The Six Billion Dollar Man documentary about Assange’s life.

Assange, 53, returned to his native Australia after pleading guilty in June under an agreement with US officials to one count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security materials.

The plea ended Assange’s five-year stay in a British prison, which followed seven years at the Ecuador embassy as he sought to avoid extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations, which he denies.

Julian Assange and Stella Assange
Stella Assange said her husband was ‘very concerned’ about the state of the world right now. (AP PHOTO)

“He was in a very grave situation in the prison. He’s recovering from that,” Stella Assange told Reuters in Cannes.

“But now he’s coming to understand how grave the situation outside (prison) is and thinking, making plans to find the means of what to do about it,” she added.

“He’s very, very concerned about the state of the world and the state that we’re all in right now,” said Stella, who met Assange in London in 2011 while working as part of his legal team.

Kathleen Fournier, Stella Assange, Julian Assange and Rafael Correa
Julian Assange didn’t speak to reporters at Cannes, where a documentary about him was premiering. (AP PHOTO)

Julian and Stella Assange, wearing a brooch with a picture of British designer Vivienne Westwood holding a sign saying “Stop Killing”, walked the red carpet on Wednesday evening local time.

Julian has so far not spoken at any of his appearances.

WikiLeaks in 2010 released hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents on America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history – along with swathes of diplomatic cables.

Kristinn Hrafnsson, second from left, Julian and Stella Assange
Assange spent five years behind bars in the UK and before that seven years in the Ecuador embassy. (AP PHOTO)

The documentary from Emmy-winning director Eugene Jarecki takes on the tone of a high-tech international thriller to recount Assange’s fight against extradition, using WikiLeaks footage and archives, and previously unpublished evidence.

Jarecki was awarded a Golden Globe prize for documentary at Cannes ahead of the premiere.

Jarecki, who began filming before Assange was released, said he never expected to see him walk around Cannes as a free man.

By inviting Assange, the festival was sending a message about the need for freedom of information and a free press, Jarecki told Reuters, as those values are in decline in many parts of the world according to an index from Reporters without Borders.

The director called Assange “a canary in the coal mine” in foretelling the US government’s current moves to exert more control over media access to President Donald Trump.

“If we had taken that bit more seriously, we might have seen a bunch of this coming,” said the US director.

Assange’s lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, told Reuters the film portrayed the WikiLeaks founder as he should be shown.

“This film is absolutely necessary in terms of telling the story of free speech and what Julian Assange, his case means for the world, not just for him, but for the world,” she said.

Reuters