Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has been released from prison in the United Kingdom. He’s now on his way back to Australia after striking a deal with US authorities.
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Assange, aged 52, will plead guilty to a single charge related to breaching US espionage law. The charge involves conspiracy to obtain and disclose classified US national defense documents. This agreement ends years of legal battles over his extradition from the UK.
On Monday, June 24, Assange was freed from the high-security Belmarsh prison in the UK. He was then taken to the airport, where he flew out of the country.
Assange will appear in court in Saipan, a US Pacific territory, at 9 am on Wednesday (which is 23:00 GMT on Tuesday). There, he will be sentenced to 62 months, taking into account the time he has already served.
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After the hearing, Assange will return to Australia. His wife, Stella, expressed her elation, calling it an incredible moment. WikiLeaks, under Assange’s leadership, published groundbreaking stories exposing government corruption and human rights abuses. Their work held powerful entities accountable.
Assange paid a heavy price for these principles, but as he returns to Australia, WikiLeaks thanks everyone who stood by them. Assange launched WikiLeaks in 2006, creating an online platform for whistleblowers to submit classified material anonymously.
The platform gained prominence with the release of footage showing a US Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad, which killed civilians and journalists.
Later, WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of classified US documents on wars and diplomatic cables. In 2019, the US charged Assange with 17 counts of breaching the Espionage Act.
Lawyers argued that he conspired with Chelsea Manning, a former army intelligence analyst. Manning had spent seven years in prison for leaking material to WikiLeaks and was later freed by President Barack Obama’s commutation of her sentence in 2017.
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