Julian Assange to End 14-Year Persecution with a Guilty Plea in Exchange for Freedom
"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, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK," announced Wikileaks.
- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been released from prison in the UK. He agreed to plead guilty to a single charge of breaching US espionage law by conspiring to obtain and disclose classified national defense documents.
- The plea deal would credit Assange for time served, allowing him to immediately return to Australia. However, the deal still requires approval from a federal judge. Assange is expected to appear at a court in Saipan, a US Pacific territory, at 9am on Wednesday (23:00 GMT on Tuesday). There, he will be sentenced to 62 months of the time already served, and is expected to return to Australia shortly after.
Arriving in Bangkok #AssangeJet pic.twitter.com/K3tCn0Zyzk
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 25, 2024
- Julian Assange's wife, Stella, expressed her joy, calling it "incredible" that her husband is set to be freed. She stated, "He will be a free man once it has been signed off by the judge, and that will happen sometime tomorrow."
"I feel elated… I also feel worried … Until it’s fully signed off, I worry, but it looks like we’ve got there…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 told Reuters.
- Stella Assange and Wikileaks also urged the public to follow Assange's journey back to Australia.
"Saipan is a remote US overseas territory. He will be entering the United States. Julian won’t be safe until he lands in Australia. Please keep tracking his flight," she added.
- The deal is expected to bring an end to a lengthy legal saga during which Assange has spent over five years in a British high-security prison and seven years in the Ecuadorean embassy in London following WikiLeaks' release of a massive trove of secret U.S. documents exposing institutional corruption and war crimes in one of the largest security breaches in U.S. military history.
Think about this: before being able to return to Australia, #Assange had to fly to the midst of the Pacific in order to plea guilty for a crime he has not committed, while the war criminals he exposed are still free. Let's celebrate today, but never forget & keep fighting. pic.twitter.com/GdBcCuNa0i
— Srećko Horvat (@HorvatSrecko) June 25, 2024
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