After spending five years in detention in London's high-security H M Prison Belmarsh, a Category A men’s prison in Thamesmead, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has made a plea deal with the US Government. He will plead guilty to one charge of espionage and return home to Australia after years of fighting extradition from Britain. US authorities have agreed to drop their demand for Assange to be extradited from Britain after reaching a plea deal with the WikiLeaks founder.
In return for pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, Assange will be sentenced to time served 62 months, the time he has already spent in a British prison, according to court documents. Once a judge accepts the guilty plea, the 52-year-old will be free to return to Australia, the country of his birth. According to the former US director of national intelligence, Julian Assange has “paid his dues” over his WikiLeaks disclosures.[1]
Assange went to a hearing on the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. “The fact that there is a guilty plea, under the Espionage Act, about obtaining and disclosing National Defense information is a very serious concern for journalists and national security journalists in general,” his wife has said to journalists. She said it had been “a rough few years” and that she would not believe he was free until they were reunited. She said she was still worried something would go wrong.
Stella Assange, a lawyer, has worked on his campaign for release for many years. The couple has two children, who are in Australia with her but are yet to be told that their father has been released. “All I told them was that there was a big surprise,” she told the BBC earlier, saying the details of Assange’s release needed to be kept under wraps while they were traveling to Australia, and “obviously no one can stop a five and a seven-year-old from, you know, shouting it from the rooftops at any given moment.”
Numerous press freedom advocates have argued that criminally charging Assange threatens free speech. “Julian Assange is free,” WikiLeaks said in a statement on Twitter / X. “He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June 2024, after spending 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK.” WikiLeaks posted a video on X that showed Assange dressed in a blue shirt and jeans, signing a document before boarding a private jet.
The court hearing takes place in the US commonwealth territory of Saipan in the Marianas Islands, over 5,000 miles from the mainland, where he would have stood trial on multiple charges. In a deal apparently arranged by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's government, he is now in Australia.
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[1] https://www.cybersecurityintelligence.com/blog/hacker-spy-or-journalist--7740.html
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