Julian Assange to be freed after pleading guilty in US espionage case

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is due to plead guilty tomorrow to violating US espionage law, after striking a deal that will end his imprisonment in Britain and allow him to return to Australia after 14 years.

According to court papers filed by the US Justice Department, Assange has agreed to plead to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified national defence documents.

He is due to be sentenced to 62 months of time already served at a hearing in Saipan at 9am local time tomorrow.

Assange left Belmarsh prison in the UK yesterday before being bailed by the UK High Court and boarding a flight that afternoon, WikiLeaks said in a statement posted on X.

“He was granted bail by the High Court in London,” the statement continues, “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.

JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREE

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…

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 24, 2024

“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.”

In 2010, WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, representing the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history.

Assange was indicted during former US president Donald Trump’s administration over the mass release by WikiLeaks of secret US documents, which were leaked by Chelsea Manning, a former US military intelligence analyst who was also prosecuted under the Espionage Act.

Many global supporters and press freedom advocates have long argued that criminally charging Assange represents a threat to free speech.

Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which defends press freedom, said that the plea deal averted the worst-case scenario of a full-on prosecution: “But this deal contemplates that Assange will have served five years in prison for activities that journalists engage in every day.”

He added that the outcome could “cast a long shadow over the most important kinds of journalism, not just in this country but around the world”.