Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to a felony charge in a deal with the US Justice Department that will free him and end his imprisonment in Britain, he is then expected to return home to Australia. On Monday, Assange, 52, was taken from the high-security Belmarsh prison to London's Stansted airport, a Wikileaks statement said, he then boarded a flight to an unnamed destination.
According to the Associated Press, Assange will appear in the federal court in the Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth in the Western Pacific, to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information.
He will be sentenced to 62 months of time already served at a hearing on Saipan Island at 9 AM (local time) on Wednesday. He will return to Australia after the hearing, bringing an end to the saga. The hearing is being held there because Assange opposes travelling to the US and the court is close to Australia.
Wikileaks Classified US Documents
In 2010, Wikileaks released thousands of classified US documents regarding Washington’s war in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the Justice Department’s indictment which was unsealed in 2019, Assange was accused of encouraging and helping US Army Intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified documents that were leaked by Wikileaks.
According to Reuters, more than 700,000 documents which included diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts as well as the famous 2007 video of a US Apache helicopter firing at suspected insurgents in Iraq, killing a dozen people including journalists were released in 2010.
Assange and Manning were indicted during former President Donald Trump's administration, Manning was also prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Following this press freedom advocates and Assange supporters have argued that criminally charging him represents a threat to free speech.
As per a Reuters report, an Australian government spokesperson said: "Prime Minister [Anthony] Albanese has been clear - Mr Assange’s case has dragged on for too long and there is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration."
Assange was first arrested in Britain in 2010 on a European arrest warrant after Swedish authorities said they wanted to question him over sex-crime allegations that were later dropped. He fled to Ecuador's embassy, where he remained for seven years, to avoid extradition to Sweden, as per the report. He was dragged out of the embassy in 2019 and jailed for skipping bail.