06/26/24
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has been released after pleading guilty in a U.S. court in the Northern Mariana Islands to a felony charge related to publishing U.S. military secrets. According to court documents from Saipan, Assange admitted to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose documents connected to U.S. national defense.
As part of the plea agreement, the U.S. will drop its extradition request and recommended that Assange's sentence be limited to time already served, without any additional fines. This agreement follows Assange's five-year imprisonment and years of legal battles.
WikiLeaks announced that Assange is set to return to Australia, with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese advocating for his release. Assange left London’s Belmarsh Prison on Monday and traveled to Saipan via a private jet, with a brief layover in Bangkok for refueling.
Assange, 52, has spent over a decade fighting extradition. He initially sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years before being moved to Belmarsh Prison for the past five years. He faced 18 charges in the U.S., including 17 under the Espionage Act and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. These charges stemmed from WikiLeaks' publication of confidential military and diplomatic documents related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with a potential sentence of up to 175 years.
WikiLeaks first gained international attention in 2010 with the release of footage from a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad, which resulted in the deaths of two Reuters journalists and several others. Following this, WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of classified files, causing significant embarrassment for Washington.
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