The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange He was released after reaching an agreement with the US justice and plead guilty to violating the US Espionage Act. In this way, he will be able to return to his home in Australia.
US prosecutors said in court documents that Assange, 52, agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal charge of conspiracy to obtain and disclose classified national defense information of the United Statesas filed in the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.
Assange is scheduled to be sentenced at a hearing on the island of Saipan this Wednesday morning. It is likely that he will be credited for the time he has already served and will not be given new prison sentences.
From the official account of X de WikiLeaks They confirmed the news through an extensive message. “Julian Assange is free. Released from Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of June 24, after having spent 1,901 days there. The High Court in London granted him bail and He was released at Stansted Airport during the afternoonwhere he boarded a plane and departed the United Kingdom,” the statement began.
In turn, they highlighted that this is the “result of a global campaign that encompassed grassroots organizers, defenders of press freedom, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations.”
Although they clarified that the agreement with the United States Department of Justice “was not formally closed”celebrated that “he will soon be reunited with his wife Stella Assange and his children, who have only known their father behind bars.”
“As we return to Australia, we thank everyone who supported us, They fought for us and remained fully committed to the fight for their freedom.“, closed the statement.
What is WikiLeaks and why Julian Assange spent five years in prison
In 2010, WikiLeaks made public hundreds of thousands of American military documents classifieds about the wars of Washington in Afghanistan and Iraqthe largest security breaches of its kind in US military history.
Assange He was accused during the administration of the former president donald trump for the massive publication of secret American documents by WikiLeaks, that were leaked by Chelsea Manning, a former US military intelligence analyst who was also prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
The more than 700,000 documents included diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts, such as a 2007 video of a U.S. Apache helicopter firing on suspected insurgents in Iraq, killing a dozen people, including two Reuters news staff. That video was made public in 2010.
The charges against Assange sparked outrage among his many supporters around the world, who have long argued that Assange, as editor of Wikileaks, should not face charges often used against federal government employees who steal or leak information. .
Many press freedom advocates argued that criminally charging Assange represents a threat to freedom of expression.
Assange was first detained in Britain in 2010 under a European arrest warrant, after Swedish authorities said they wanted to question him over allegations of sexual offenses that were later dropped. He fled to the Ecuadorian embassy, where he remained for seven years, to avoid his extradition to Sweden.
He was dragged from the embassy in 2019 and jailed for bail jumping. Since then he has been in London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison, from where he has been fighting extradition to the United States for almost five years.
During his stay in Belmarsh he married his partner, Stella, with whom he had two children while he was a refugee in the Ecuadorian embassy.
Source: Ambito
