WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has been released from a British prison and will be allowed to return to his native Australia after pleading guilty to illegally disseminating national security material in the United States. nbc news.
court documents Submit on Monday U.S. federal government announcement in CNMI suggests plea deal is imminent, despite New York Times Point out that everything still needs to be approved by a judge. Assange had previously faced 170 years in prison.
Why are court documents filed in the U.S. Pacific Commonwealth nation of the Northern Mariana Islands? according to Associated Pressthis was due to Assange’s “objection to traveling to the US mainland and the court’s proximity to Australia.”
The 52-year-old Assange has been held in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London for the past five years, and before that, he had been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 when he first applied for asylum.Authorities dragged out the embassy April 2019.
“Julian Assange is free,” the WikiLeaks X account tweeted around Monday 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time. “He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of June 24 after spending 1,901 days. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted Airport in the afternoon, where he boarded a plane Leave the UK.
WikiLeaks also released a video of Assange reading documents and appearing to board a plane possibly bound for the Northern Mariana Islands to formally enter his plea.
The Times explained that senior Justice Department officials found the plea deal acceptable because Assange was already serving a five-year sentence in the UK while awaiting extradition to the United States.
The original charges against Assange were filed in 2019 by the U.S. Department of Justice under President Donald Trump, even though Trump often talks about how much he loves WikiLeaks. Trump failed to pardon Assange before leaving office, and many Assange supporters insisted the former president would do so.
Assange faces 18 charges of violating the Espionage Act and charges related to criminal hacking, but the Times reports that he will plead guilty to only one charge. Assange allegedly provided whistleblower Chelsea Manning with instructions on how to access classified computers, which experts say is a distinguishing factor that makes his conduct more serious than that of a typical journalist who merely circulates sensitive information.
Some of the documents were released by WikiLeaks in 2011 as “Collateral Murder”, including one 2007 video Shows US military killed several civilians in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists.
The plea deal will end Assange’s more than decade-long saga, although it is unclear whether the WikiLeaks founder will immediately return to work. Assange began to become a celebrity in left-wing and liberal circles in the early 2010s, and later gained increased admiration from those on the political right after further promoting conspiracy theories in support of Donald Trump in 2016.
The Australian government has repeatedly asked the White House to release Assange, but it is unclear whether President Biden will intervene in the case. Assange reportedly suffered various health problems in prison, although short videos released by WikiLeaks appear to show Assange apparently in good health.
