Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Freed in a Plead Deal with the United States

In a post on X, Wikileaks have reported that Julian Assange is free.

The post reads,

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 during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK.

This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations.

This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised. We will provide more information as soon as possible. After more than five years in a 2×3 metre 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.

WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions. As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles, and for the people’s right to know. As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom. Julian’s freedom is our freedom.

According to the report, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, agreed to enter a guilty plea on Monday to a single felony charge of unlawfully obtaining and disclosing national security information in exchange for his release from a British prison, thus concluding his protracted and contentious standoff with the United States.

Mr. Assange, aged 52, was permitted to appear before a federal judge at one of the more remote locations of the federal judiciary, specifically the courthouse in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, according to a brief court filing made public late Monday. He is anticipated to be sentenced to approximately five years, equivalent to the duration he has already served in Britain, as per a law enforcement official familiar with the terms of the agreement.

This development represents a fitting final turn in Mr. Assange’s case, as he persistently resisted extradition to the U.S. mainland. The islands, being a United States commonwealth situated in the Pacific Ocean, are significantly nearer to Mr. Assange’s native Australia, where he holds citizenship, than courts located in the continental United States or Hawaii.

Shortly after the deal was disclosed, WikiLeaks said that Mr. Assange had left London. Mr. Assange is scheduled to appear in Saipan at 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday and is expected to fly back to Australia “at the conclusion of the proceedings,” Matthew J. McKenzie, an official in the Justice Department’s counterterrorism division, wrote in a letter to the judge in the case.

The deal would brought an end a prolonged battle that began after Mr. Assange became alternately celebrated and reviled for revealing state secrets in the 2010s.

Those included material about American military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as confidential cables shared among diplomats. During the 2016 campaign, WikiLeaks released thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee, leading to revelations that embarrassed the party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.