WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been freed after reaching a plea deal with the United States Justice Department.
Assange has been imprisoned in the UK’s Belmarsh prison for the last five years after spending seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy with questionable protection of political asylum.
JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREE
Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a…
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 24, 2024
In a post on X, WikiLeaks wrote:
After more than five years in a 2×3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon reunite with his wife Stella Assange, and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars.
WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions. As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles, and for the people’s right to know.
As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.
Julian’s freedom is our freedom.
The publisher was facing charges under the Espionage Act for publishing the Iraq and Afghan War Logs that were given to him by whistleblower Chelsea Manning. If convicted, he faced a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison for publishing the leaked materials.
On Monday evening, NBC News reported:
Assange was charged by criminal information — which typically signifies a plea deal — with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, the court documents say. A letter from Justice Department official Matthew McKenzie to U.S. District Judge Ramona Manglona of the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands said that Assange would appear in court at 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday (or, 7 p.m. ET on Tuesday) to plead guilty and said that DOJ expects Assange will return to Australia, his country of citizenship, after the proceedings.
U.S. charges against Assange stem from one of the largest publications of classified information in American history, which took place during the first term of Barack Obama’s presidency. Starting in late 2009, according to the government, Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning, a military intelligence analyst, to disclose tens of thousands of activity reports about the war in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of reports about the war in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of State Department cables and assessment briefs of Guantanamo Bay detainees using his WikiLeaks website.
The court documents revealing Assange’s plea deal were filed Monday night in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.
The Northern Mariana Islands are a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean.
Under the deal, Assange will appear in that court to be sentenced to 62 months in prison, with credit for the time he has already served in Belmarsh. This will allow him to return to his home in Australia.
The charges he will plead guilty to fall under “Conspiracy To Obtain and Disclose National Defense Information.”
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