Julian Assange to End 14-Year Persecution with a Guilty Plea in Exchange for Freedom

• 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.

• 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.

Wikileaks Post
US Court Filing
Reuters Article / Archive
BBC Article / Archive