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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge in a deal with the US Department of Justice that will resolve a long-running legal saga that spanned multiple continents and centered on the publication of a trove of secret documents , according to court documents filed late Monday.
WikiLeaks said in a statement Monday that Assange had left a British prison on Monday and flown out of the United Kingdom from London Stansted Airport.
“After more than five years in a [two-by-three-metre] In his cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon reunite with his wife Stella Assange and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars,” the statement said.
“This is the result of a global campaign that spans grassroots organizers, press freedom activists, lawmakers and leaders from across the political spectrum to the United Nations.”
Assange will appear in federal court in the Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the western Pacific Ocean, to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information , the Justice Department said in a letter filed. in court.
The guilty plea, which must be approved by a judge, brings an abrupt conclusion in a criminal case of international intrigue and in the U.S. government’s yearslong search for a publisher whose wildly popular secret-sharing website made him a cause celebre among many press freedom advocates who said he was acting as a journalist to expose U.S. military misconduct.
In contrast, investigators have repeatedly claimed that his actions violated laws designed to protect sensitive information and endanger the country’s national security.
He is expected to return to Australia after his plea and sentencing, scheduled for Wednesday morning local time in Saipan, the largest island in the Mariana Islands. The hearing is taking place there because of Assange’s opposition to travel to the US mainland and the court’s proximity to Australia.
The deal ensures that Assange will plead guilty while sparing him additional prison time. He hid in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for years after Swedish authorities had him arrested on rape charges before being imprisoned in Britain.
A long battle to prevent extradition
Prosecutors have agreed to a sentence of the five years Assange has already spent in a high-security British prison as he fought to avoid extradition to the US to face charges, a process that has played out in a series of hearings in London.
Last month he was given the right to appeal an extradition order after his lawyers argued that the US government had given “blatantly inadequate” guarantees that he would enjoy the same freedom of expression protections afforded to a US citizen by Groot -Britain would be extradited.
Assange is hailed by many around the world as a hero who exposed military misconduct in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by US forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.
But his reputation has also been tarnished by rape allegations, which he has denied.
The activist and wife of Julian Assange says he has been prosecuted and held under harsh conditions during his years-long legal odyssey and fight against US extradition.
The Justice Department indictment, unsealed in 2019, accused Assange of encouraging and assisting U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in stealing diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks published in 2010. Prosecutors had accused Assange of harming national security by publishing documents that harmed the US and its allies and aided his opponents.
The case was criticized by press advocates and Assange supporters. Federal prosecutors defended it as targeting conduct far beyond that of an information-gathering journalist, amounting to an attempt to obtain, steal and indiscriminately publish classified government documents. It was filed even though the Obama administration’s Justice Department had prosecuted him years earlier.
