Julian Assange walks free after plea deal with US in WikiLeaks espionage case
- In Reports
- 12:17 PM, Jun 25, 2024
- Myind Staff
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange walked out of Belmarsh prison in the UK on Monday (local time). He was set to plead guilty this week to breaching US espionage laws as part of a deal that ended his imprisonment in the UK and permitted his return to Australia.
Assange, 52, has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal charge of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defense documents, according to filings in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.
Assange had been detained in the UK for five years while fighting extradition charges by the US, which aimed to prosecute him for disclosing military secrets. The UK government approved his extradition in June 2022. He is scheduled to appear in the US territory on Wednesday (local time).
"Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there", Wikileaks said in a statement posted on social media platform X.
"This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations," the statement said.
"This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised. We will provide more information as soon as possible", it added in the post.
He is expected to be sentenced to 62 months in prison, with credit for the five years he has served in prison in the UK.
"Julian is free!!!!" his wife, Stella Assange, said in a post on X.
"Words cannot express our immense gratitude to YOU - yes YOU, who have all mobilised for years and years to make this come true."
Assange's father John Shipton thanked Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for his intervention in the case.
"It looks as though Julian will be free to come back to Australia. My thanks and congratulations to all his supporters that have made that possible, and of course, the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese," he told ABC News.
In 2010, WikiLeaks released thousands of classified US military documents from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, marking the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history.
Over 700,000 documents were released, including diplomatic cables and battlefield reports.
Assange was indicted by a US federal grand jury in 2019 on 18 counts related to WikiLeaks' publication of these national security documents.
The charges against Assange sparked massive outrage among his global supporters, with many press freedom advocates calling the criminal charges a 'threat to free speech'.
To avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced sexual assault accusations that were eventually dropped, Assange spent seven years holed up in Ecuador's London embassy.
Image source: Reuters
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