WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is expected to plead guilty on Wednesday to breaching U.S. espionage laws.
This agreement will conclude a 14-year-long legal battle in the UK, allowing Assange to return to Australia.
Assange, 52, has consented to admit guilt to a single charge of conspiring to obtain and release classified U.S. national defense documents, according to filings in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.
This plea deal concludes a prolonged legal saga that included Assange’s five-year incarceration in a British high-security prison and seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he sought refuge from accusations of sex crimes in Sweden and fought against extradition to the U.S., where he faced 18 criminal charges.
The U.S. government has regarded Assange as a reckless figure who jeopardized the lives of agents through WikiLeaks’ massive release of confidential U.S. documents, marking one of the most significant security breaches in U.S. military history.
Conversely, to advocates of press freedom and his supporters, including numerous world leaders, celebrities, and notable journalists, Assange is seen as a hero for unveiling wrongdoing and alleged war crimes, persecuted for embarrassing U.S. authorities.
On Wednesday, Assange is slated to be sentenced to 62 months, time already served, during a hearing in Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands at 9 a.m. local time (2300 GMT Tuesday).
Prosecutors chose the U.S. territory in the Pacific due to Assange’s reluctance to travel to the mainland U.S. and its proximity to Australia.
Assange, born in Australia, left Belmarsh maximum-security jail early Monday morning after being granted bail by the London High Court and subsequently boarded a flight, according to his wife, Stella Assange.
She mentioned he was currently on a stopover in Bangkok.
“I feel elated,” Stella, who traveled from London to Australia on Sunday with their two children, told Reuters.
“I also feel worried … Until it’s fully signed off, I worry, but it looks like we’ve got there.”
A video posted on X by WikiLeaks showed Assange wearing a blue shirt and jeans, signing a document before boarding a private jet.
After the hearing in Saipan, Assange will travel to Canberra, arriving on Wednesday, his wife said.
He had recently secured permission to appeal against his U.S. extradition approval, with the case scheduled for London’s High Court next month, a factor that Stella Assange believes facilitated the plea deal discussions.
Too Long
The Australian government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has been urging U.S. President Joe Biden for Assange’s release but has refrained from commenting on the ongoing legal proceedings.
“There is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration, and we want him brought home to Australia,” Albanese stated in the country’s parliament.
WikiLeaks gained prominence in 2010 after releasing hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. military documents regarding wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with a substantial collection of diplomatic cables.
The release included over 700,000 documents featuring battlefield reports such as a 2007 video showing a U.S.
Apache helicopter firing on suspected insurgents in Iraq, killing twelve people, including two Reuters journalists. This video was made public in 2010.
“Julian Assange endangered the lives of our troops in a time of war and should have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” said Mike Pence, who served as U.S.
Vice President under Donald Trump when the charges were brought against Assange.
“The Biden administration’s plea deal with Assange is a miscarriage of justice and dishonors the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our Armed Forces and their families,” Pence commented on X.
Assange’s charges have incited outrage among his global supporters, who argue that as WikiLeaks’ publisher, he should not face charges typically reserved for federal employees who steal or leak information.
Many press freedom advocates claim that prosecuting Assange poses a threat to free speech and journalism.
Alan Rusbridger, a former editor of Britain’s Guardian newspaper, one of the publications that collaborated with WikiLeaks to publish some of the leaked materials, stated it was “pretty disturbing” that espionage laws were being used against those revealing uncomfortable truths for governments.
Stella Assange believes the U.S. government should have dropped the case against her husband entirely.
“We will be seeking a pardon, obviously, but the fact that there is a guilty plea, under the Espionage Act, in relation to obtaining and disclosing national defense information is obviously a very serious concern for journalists,” she said.
Swedish Allegations
Assange was first arrested in Britain in 2010 on a European arrest warrant following Swedish authorities’ request to question him over sex-crime allegations, which were later dropped.
He sought asylum in Ecuador’s embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, staying there for seven years.
During his time there, he and Stella, a lawyer who worked on his case, had two children.
In 2019, Assange was forcibly removed from the embassy after Ecuador revoked his asylum status.
He was jailed for skipping bail and has been in Belmarsh ever since, fighting extradition to the United States.
“Millions of people who have been advocating for Julian, it is almost time for them to have a drink and a celebration,” his brother Gabriel Shipton told Reuters from France.
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