WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange will be released from a British prison and allowed to return to his native Australia after pleading guilty to illegally distributing national security materials in the United States, according to a stunning new report from Australia. NBC News.
Court Documents Submitted on Monday A U.S. federal investigation in the Northern Mariana Islands suggests a plea deal is imminent, The New York Times He noted that all still require approval from a judge. Assange previously faced a possible sentence of 170 years in prison.
Why were court documents filed in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean? Associated PressThis was due to Assange’s “objection to travel to US mainland and the court’s proximity to Australia”.
Assange, 52, has been held in London’s maximum security Belmarsh prison for the past five years after a years-long turmoil that saw him barricade himself in the Ecuadorian embassy when he first applied for asylum in 2012. Assange was dragged out of the embassy by British authorities in 2017. April 2019.
“Julian Assange is now free,” the WikiLeaks X account tweeted on Monday. 8pm ET“He left Belmarsh maximum security prison, where he had spent 1,901 days, on the morning of 24 June. He was granted bail at the High Court in London and released in the afternoon at Stansted Airport where he boarded a flight to depart the UK.”
WikiLeaks also released a video of Assange, embedded below, which shows him reading the documents and boarding a plane apparently bound for the Northern Mariana Islands to formally enter his arraignment.
The Times explained that senior Justice Department officials decided the plea deal was acceptable because Assange had already served five years in a British prison sentence while awaiting extradition to the US.
The first charges against Assange were brought by the US Department of Justice in 2019, despite President Donald Trump frequently speaking about how much he loved WikiLeaks. Trump did not pardon Assange before leaving office, despite many of Assange’s supporters arguing that the former president would have done so.
Assange faced 18 counts of violating the Espionage Act, plus charges related to criminal hacking, but the Times reported he would plead guilty to only one count. Assange allegedly instructed whistleblower Chelsea Manning how to access classified computers, and experts argued that this was a differentiator that made his actions more serious than a typical journalist who simply disseminates classified information.
Some of the documents were published by WikiLeaks in 2011 under the name “Collateral Murder,” and included: Video from 2007 The footage showed US forces in Iraq killing several civilians, including two Reuters journalists.
The plea deal brings to a close a lengthy saga that has engulfed Assange for more than a decade, but it’s unclear whether the WikiLeaks founder will return to work anytime soon. Assange became a celebrity among leftists and libertarians in the early 2010s and gained further acclaim from the political right after spreading pro-Donald Trump conspiracy theories in 2016.
Julian’s wife, Stella Assange, released a video statement alongside WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Frafsson that was apparently filmed shortly before Julian’s actual release.
“I’ve just gotten out of Belmarsh prison and I hope this is the last time I’ll see Julian. He spent five years, two months and two weeks in this prison and the fact that you’re seeing this means he’s out,” Mr Hrafnsson said. Say it in the video.
Stella Assange says she plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign to help with Julian’s “recovery” and medical costs.
The Australian government and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have repeatedly called on the White House to release Assange, but it was not clear whether President Joe Biden would intervene in the matter. Assange has reportedly suffered various health problems in prison, but a short video clip released by WikiLeaks shows him in apparently good health.
