Jurist WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange free ahead of anticipated US plea deal

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Julian Assange is free after 12 years of confinement, having negotiated a plea deal with the US Department of Justice on charges related to his website WikiLeaks’ publication of classified materials.

In 2006, Assange founded WikiLeaks, a website reputed for high-profile releases of leaked classified documents, including unredacted US diplomatic cables and sensitive defense information. A deeply polarizing figure, his supporters see him as a champion of free speech whose dedication to transparency has exposed war crimes and human rights abuses, while his critics see him as a threat to national security whose leaks endangered lives.

He had spent the past five years in a UK prison, where he had been battling extradition requests from the US. For seven years prior, he was confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had sought refuge from legal battles in the US, on national security grounds, and in Sweden, where he was accused of sexual misconduct. Though he was initially granted asylum by Ecuadorian authorities, the grant was revoked in 2019, and he was taken into custody by British authorities.

Assange had faced 18 counts in the US related to the acquisition and dissemination of military and intelligence leaks. Had he been extradited to the US, he could have faced up to 175 years in prison under the US Department of Justice’s previous indictment. Updated charging documents released Tuesday charge Assange with one count of Conspiracy to Obtain and Disclose National Defense Information. The document alleges that Assange worked with former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to publish leaked US documents classified as top secret, secret, and confidential. Manning was sentenced in 2013 to 35 years in military prison for leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, including most infamously a 2007 video that showed US Army airstrikes firing on people from helicopters, killing several of them, including two Reuters journalists. Then-US President Barrack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence in 2017, citing disproportionate punishment.

Assange is expected to enter a guilty plea on Wednesday morning in a US federal court in the Northern Mariana Islands — a US commonwealth about 3,500 miles north of Sydney, Australia. According to court documents, Assange had been resistant to entering a plea in the US mainland, thus prompting the parties to agree to the remote Pacific Ocean location.

A letter from US prosecutors on Tuesday revealed expectations that Assange would plead guilty to the updated charge and return to his home country immediately thereafter, indicating the sentencing is expected to overlap with time already served in the UK:

We anticipate that the defendant will plead guilty to the charge in the Information of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information relating to the national defense of the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 793(g), and be sentenced by the Court for that offense. We appreciate the Court accommodating these plea and sentencing proceedings on a single day at the joint request of the parties, in light of the defendant’s opposition to traveling to the continental United States to enter his guilty plea and the proximity of this federal US District Court to the defendant’s country of citizenship, Australia, to which we expect he will return at the conclusion of the proceedings.

WikiLeaks announced via X on Monday that Assange had been released on bail and then immediately departed the UK for Australia, where he is to reunite with his family. The organization noted that Assange had successfully negotiated a plea deal, but that its details had yet to be finalized:

This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organizers, 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 finalized.

The post WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange free ahead of anticipated US plea deal appeared first on JURIST - News.

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