Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and his wife Stella will seek a pardon after he agreed to plead guilty to violating the US Espionage Act, ending his long-running legal saga in Britain.
Julian Assange is expected in a court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean, where he will appear in court as part of a plea deal that could see him released to return to Australia.
Stella Assange, a lawyer who has worked on his campaign almost since the start of his legal battle, said she was excited about the move but was still angry that the campaign had been stalled for so long.
She said they would ask for a pardon because accepting guilt on espionage charges was a “very serious concern” for journalists around the world.
A still from a video released by Wikileaks shows WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (L) before boarding a plane at Stansted Airport, London, Britain, June 24, 2024. AP Credit: WIKILEAKS/HANDOUT/EPA
She also said they would launch a fundraising campaign as the flight from London to Saipan for a court hearing and then to Australia would cost around half a million dollars (AU$750,000).
“It is Australian policy that he will have to pay for his own return flight, so he has had to charter a flight and so he will effectively be in debt when he lands in Canberra,” Assange said.
A plane carrying the WikiLeaks founder landed in Bangkok on Tuesday afternoon to refuel before the WikiLeaks founder was flown to a court hearing in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands.
Assange, whose extradition has long been requested by the United States, and disseminate national defense information, according to court documents.
A charter flight flew Assange from London, and journalists from Agence France-Presse spotted him landing at Bangkok’s Don Mueang Airport around 12:30 pm local time (3:30 pm AEST).
A senior Thai official told Agence France-Presse that Assange’s name was on the passenger list.
“(The plane) is expected to refuel and resupply with water before departing for Saipan Island at 9 p.m.,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Julian Assange is free,” WikiLeaks declares
A video posted by WikiLeaks showed Assange sitting in an unknown location with a piece of paper in his hand, shortly before boarding a plane.
“Julian Assange is free,” the publisher said in a statement on social media platform X.
“He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of June 24, having spent 1,901 days there.
“He was granted bail at the High Court in London and released at Stansted Airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and left Britain.”
WikiLeaks added in its statement that a global campaign had led to negotiations with the US Department of Justice, “leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalized.”
Wednesday at 9:00 am. He will likely be credited for time already served and will not receive any new prison time.
According to the Associated Press, the hearing is taking place there because of Assange’s opposition to travel to the US mainland and the court’s proximity to Australia.
‘We want him home’: Australian Prime Minister
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the legal process was “critical and delicate” and it was “not appropriate” to comment further in detail.
“Regardless of people’s views on Assange’s activities, the matter has dragged on for too long,” he told parliament.
“There is nothing to be gained from his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia.”
Albanese said Australian High Commissioner to Britain Stephen Smith is traveling with Assange and Australian US Ambassador Kevin Rudd is also providing “important assistance.”
Assange’s wife Stella Assange thanked supporters in an online statement.
“Words cannot express our immense gratitude to YOU – yes YOU, who have all mobilized for years to make this happen,” she said on X.
Assange case ‘casts shadow’ on press freedom
Many press freedom advocates have argued that criminally charging Assange threatens freedom of expression.
Jodie Ginsberg, the CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said the case has “cast a very long shadow” over press freedom worldwide.
“Julian has in fact had to plead guilty to an activity that is the kind of activity that journalists carry out worldwide – day in and day out, in the public interest – and that is obviously problematic,” she told SBS News.
“So it has really exposed the use and abuse of national security laws to silence journalists who want to expose crimes committed by governments and by those in power.”
National MP Barnaby Joyce, who was part of a group of Australian politicians calling for Assange’s release, said journalists all had reason to be concerned about the prosecution.
“If the dissemination of this information is a crime, then everyone where I stand now, in the Parliament of the Fourth Estate of Australia, is heading to the United States of America because you all printed it. And that creates enormous confusion. ” he said.
“I don’t want a place in Australia where if I insult the Quran I go to Riyadh, if I insult the Chinese Communist Party I go to Beijing, or where an Australian citizen who breaks a law in the United States goes to the United States – unless he is in the United States when he commits it, in which case that is a completely different issue.”
A screenshot of a video posted by WikiLeaks showing Julian Assange boarding a plane at what the publisher said was London’s Stansted Airport. Source: Delivered / WikiLeaks/X
Who is Julian Assange?
In 2010, WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents about Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history – along with reams of diplomatic cables.
Assange was indicted during the administration of former US President Donald Trump over WikiLeaks’ massive release of classified US documents leaked by Chelsea Manning, a former US military intelligence analyst who was also prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
The trove of more than 700,000 documents included diplomatic cables and battlefield reports, such as a 2007 video of a US Apache helicopter firing on suspected insurgents in Iraq, killing a dozen people, including two Reuters press workers. That video was released in 2010.
The charges against Assange sparked outrage among his many global supporters, who have long argued that Assange, as publisher of WikiLeaks, should not be charged with charges typically used against federal government employees who steal or leak information.
Assange was first arrested in Britain in 2010 on a European arrest warrant after Swedish authorities said they wanted to question him over sex crimes charges, which were later dropped. He fled to the Ecuadorian embassy, where he remained for seven years, to avoid extradition to Sweden.
He was dragged out of the embassy in 2019 and jailed for skipping bail. He has since been held in London’s Belmarsh prison, from where he fought extradition to the United States for almost five years.
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