Last month the Wau Holland Foundation announced that they had “received an invoice from the Australian government and paid the flight costs for Julian Assange from London to Australia (~480.000 €).”
About 2 weeks before, the preliminary transparency report (English, German) said that
The Foundation believes that the binding assumption of costs (respectively ‘deed; bond’) with the Australian government, for the costs of the charter flight on which Julian traveled from London via Bangkok and Saipan to Australia, will not be honored. The Assange campaign team has decided to collect separate donations for the flight and Julian’s recovery and has so far raised a total of around EUR 1 million. We therefore assume that the flight costs will not have to be paid by the Foundation
Two hours after they posted the announcement, I asked Wau Holland what had changed, but I never got a reply.
Amir posted notes saying that Wau Holland had “declared the willingness to pay in written form towards the AU gov. Up to 0.5m USD.”
So I guess the Australian government decided to collect what they could? Is it coming from the DAO money? Wau Holland money? Is it being repaid from the separate donations?
This expense WAS necessary, because Julian was still an inmate when his journey
started. Lawyers accompanied him from London onwards to Saipan (Marshall
Islands), which has an American court (which is in charge of anything happening
in Guam, I suppose).
A week before the journey the Australian government had WHS sign a deed to bear
the cost of the flight. The plane was chartered by the AU government and WHS
reimbursed their expense.
And yes, Assange campaign should have reimbursed WHS, because they explicitly
asked for donations to pay for the plane, but they didn’t.