VIDEO: Julian Assange’s father speaks on his battle to free his son

SARAH FERGUSON, PRESENTER:  John Shipton, welcome to 7.30.

JOHN SHIPTON, JULIAN ASSANGE'S FATHER:  Good evening, Sarah, good evening.

SARAH FERGUSON:  Now, just tell me first of all, when did you last speak to your son?

JOHN SHIPTON:  The day before yesterday. Julian gets a 10-minute phone call, and we speak for that 10 minutes and then it is guillotined by the jail.

SARAH FERGUSON:  And how was his state of mind in that phone call?

JOHN SHIPTON:  Since the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, the Greens and all the independents have made common statements in support of Julian, his mood, of course, is considerably elevated.

SARAH FERGUSON:  Now, as we saw, the Prime Minister and you refer to the fact that this is a bipartisan position now, but he says it needs to be brought to a conclusion. What could that conclusion look like?

JOHN SHIPTON:  For me, a conclusion would be that Julian comes home. That's the conclusion that we've always moved towards and will continue to move towards.

What the diplomats and the lawyers and Julian arrange is up to them. My job is to solely focus on bringing Julian home and speaking to the supporters wherever I can.

SARAH FERGUSON:  Do you have any realistic expectations that the US would ever drop the espionage charges against him?

JOHN SHIPTON:  Yes, of course. They have done so previously under circumstances similar to this and also, I would remind everybody that this prosecution was the decision of the White House in the Trump administration.

So, it was a decision made in the White House to refer those charges through the instrument of the Department of Justice.

So it's easily able for President Biden to instruct his Department of Justice or instruct otherwise people within the White House to find a solution suitable to Julian and to the Prime Minister.

SARAH FERGUSON:  Now you refer to the laying of the original charges and that was under US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, well he was the Secretary of State at the time, and he described Julian Assange at the time as a 'darling of terrorists', was the phrase he used then. Do you have any indication that the current administration holds a different view of him?

JOHN SHIPTON:  No. I don't have any contact with the current administration. In fact, I don't ask for it.

I have a letter on my desk now asking for a meeting with President Biden, which we'll send off in the next day or so. It's a good time, of course, to remind the President that it is a concern of the Australian people.

SARAH FERGUSON:  Now, we said that it is expected, although not certain, that President Biden will be in Australia this week. You say you have got a letter. What else can you do with President Biden in Australia, if he comes, to draw attention to Julian Assange's current predicament?

JOHN SHIPTON:  We have Stella Assange coming, we have a press club meeting. We'll also have a meeting in Parliament and on the 24th we're having a rally in Hyde Park.

Tomorrow, on the 20th, I go to a march in Sydney from the Town Hall to Pyrmont to Google offices and on the 19th, we have another meeting in Nimben and the Northern Rivers.

So a constant flow of meetings and rallies and agitation to bring the matter to, bring the matter to the attention of President Biden and similarly to build support underneath the decisions of Prime Minister Albanese and his Government.

SARAH FERGUSON:  Now, obviously we are talking about charges and a desire by the US to extradite Julian Assange, but I want to go back to the human story here. There's obviously been a lot of concern over the years in the time that he was in the Ecuadorian embassy and now in the four years he's been in Belmarsh Prison, there have been concerns about his mental health. How is he coping with this extended incarceration?

JOHN SHIPTON:  You know, the circumstances are dire, I don’t much like focusing on this because it worries me.

But in 2019, the United Nations Rapporteur on Torture, Professor Nils Melzer, released a 26-page report on the circumstances of Julian, concluding that he had been psychologically tortured over the period of 7.5 years.

The results of that, the manifestation of that psychological torture were evaluated by two doctors who went to the jail with Professor Melzer and that is in the report.

So the damage is done and recently Julian had a stroke, which has lowered his left eyelid slightly, so looks like he's almost going to wink.

So those are dire circumstances which is a burden upon Julian and his family and which we bring to the notice of everybody that, characterised by Nils Melzer in his report, we are watching a slow-motion murder before our eyes.

SARAH FERGUSON:  John Shipton, on that note, thank you very much indeed for joining us and bringing us that update.

JOHN SHIPTON:  Thank you, Sarah, thank you.