British-Australian author Kathy Lette said she is ‘elated’ at the release of Julian Assange from Belmarsh prison in London on Tuesday.
“I hope he’s going to eat his own body weight in Vegemite sandwiches,” she told ABC radio following the news of a deal with the US justice department that is expected to secure Assange’s freedom.
The Times and Sunday Times contributor expressed her joy writing: “Thrilled re Julian’s release. I feel as elated as the plane flying him to freedom.”
She said she was “relieved” for Assange’s wife, Stella, and their two children, and thanked the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Assange’s legal advisor, human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson and “all the team.”
Lette added that “Journos & publishers the world over can breathe a sigh of relief & continue to speak truth to power.”
Lette’s former husband was Geoffrey Robertson, the high-profile Australian-British barrister and specialist extradition lawyer who unsuccessfully defended Assange in extradition proceedings in the UK in 2010. The couple, who were married in 1990 and separated in 2017, opened their doors to the WikiLeaks founder who was at the time seeking legal advice from Robertson over sexual assault allegations made against him by two women in Sweden.
In 2019, Lette revealed that Assange was one of the many house guests she had entertained in the home she shared with her former husband.
“The upside of being married to a human rights lawyer for nearly three decades is the many intriguing house guests I’ve entertained for long periods,” she said. “My attic has been a temporary home to exiled Prime Ministers, prisoners on the run.”
She revealed that during his stay, she and Assange had “clashed” over just one thing — his fiction reading habits.
“A lot of men, Julian included, neglect fiction written by women, but unlike other men, Julian eventually came around,” Lette said.
“When incarcerated in Wandsworth prison, sometime after he stayed, I sent a box of novels with authors like Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and any female authors I could find, accompanied with a note saying, ‘Now that you’re a captive audience’. I’m sure he’s completely converted to female fiction.”
Lette has been an outspoken supporter of Assange and his fight for freedom since her former husband became involved in his legal battles more than a decade ago.
“It’s horrible what they’re doing to Julian,” she said in 2019. “What he did… it’s freedom of speech, and it’s what democracy is based on.”
In 2021, she described Assange as “the most complicated” and “diverting” house guest she had, calling him a “heroic freedom fighter or maverick controversialist.”
“He is a polarising character,” she admitted in the UK’s The Telegraph. “I definitely don’t agree with everything he’s said nor everything he has published. But I do defend his right to say and publish it.”
In her article, Lette revealed that she was sympathetic to Assange’s plight for freedom because she suspected him of having autism — a condition which her adult son also has.
“I suggested to Julian that he was on the spectrum long before it had occurred to him,” Lette wrote. “One reason I have always lent him my support.”
“As revealed in court [in 2020] he has been diagnosed with autism. The judge found that Julian’s Asperger’s Syndrome, coupled with clinical depression and the severity of the imprisonment he faced in the US, would likely impel him to take his own life.”
Lette noted the cases of Lauri Love and Gary McKinnon, two Britons living with Asperger’s who faced charges of hacking into US military agencies. Both had successfully used English court proceedings to block US extradition applications.
“Now that Julian has an official prognosis, it was right for the judge to show [Assange] similar leniency and compassion,” Lette added.
“A diagnosis of autism is not a ‘get out of jail free’ card, but it could help explain why people so often misread Julian’s single-minded absorption as narcissism and why he has alienated allies so easily in the past.”
In 2012, when “The Simpsons” were planning their milestone 500th episode, Lette was brought in to write the dialogue for Assange’s character, who appeared as a guest star on the episode — an accolade Lette admits happened because she “got to know Julian so well.”
Lette wrote the dialogue for Assange, who recorded his cameo over the phone from a secret location in the UK.
Lette described the resulting episode (Season 23, Ep 14) as “pithy, witty and topical” and revealed that the producers had cut her favourite line — when Marge asks Julian for the recipe for his barbecue marinade, to which he replies: “I’m sorry. But I never reveal my sauces.”
Assange, 52, is being sentenced in front of a US federal judge in Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands near Guam this morning, where he is expected to accept a charge under the US Espionage Act. He has plead guilty, and has agreed to “be subject to the punishment, and waive rights to an indictment, trial, appeal, statute of limitations and others.”