By Sarah N. Lynch and Alasdair Pal
WASHINGTON/SYDNEY (Reuters) – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is set to plead guilty this week to violating US espionage laws, in a deal that will spare him a prison sentence in Britain and allow him to return to Australia, ending a 14-year legal odyssey. .
Assange, 52, has agreed to plead guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US defense documents, according to filings in the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.
He will be sentenced to 62 months of time served in a trial on the island of Saipan at 9 am local time Wednesday (2300 GMT Tuesday).
Assange left Belmarsh prison in England on Monday before being released by the UK High Court and boarded a plane that evening, Wikileaks said in a statement posted on the X social media platform.
“This is the result of a global campaign that brought together grassroots organizers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the UN,” the statement said.
A video posted on X by Wikileaks shows Assange in a blue shirt and jeans signing documents before boarding a private jet with the signature of the charter company VistaJet.
He will return to Australia after the hearing, the Wikileaks statement added, referring to the hearing in Saipan.
“Julian is free!!!!” his wife, Stella Assange, said in a post on X.
“Words can’t express how grateful I am to YOU ​​- yes YOU, who have all raised years and years to make this possible.”
The only VistaJet flight departing Stansted on Monday evening was bound for Bangkok, according to FlightRadar24 data. Assange’s spokesman in Australia declined to comment on the flight plans. VistaJet did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Australian government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has been pushing for Assange’s release but has refused to comment on legal proceedings while they are ongoing.
“The Albanese Prime Minister has made it clear – Mr Assange’s case has gone on for too long and there is nothing to be gained by continuing to imprison him,” a government spokesman said.
A lawyer for Assange did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
HISTORICAL COSTS
WikiLeaks in 2010 released hundreds of thousands of US military documents about Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – the biggest security breach in US military history – along with diplomatic cables.
Assange was charged during the administration of former President Donald Trump for the release of secret US documents WikiLeaks, which 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 include diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts such as a 2007 video of a US Apache helicopter being fired on suspected insurgents in Iraq, killing a dozen people including two Reuters news staff. The video was released in 2010.
The charges against Assange have sparked outrage among many global supporters who have long argued that Assange, the publisher of WikiLeaks, should not face charges normally used against federal government employees who steal or leak information.
Many press freedom advocates argue that criminal charges against Assange are a threat to free speech.
“The plea deal will prevent the worst-case scenario for press freedom, but this deal assumes that Assange will spend five years in prison for activities that journalists do every day,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the free speech organization Knight First. Amendment Institute at Columbia University.
“It will cast a long shadow on the most important kind of journalism, not just in this country but around the world.”
LONG ODYSSEY
Assange was first arrested in Britain in 2010 on a European arrest warrant after Swedish authorities said they wanted to question him about sex crime charges that were later dropped. He fled to the Ecuadorian embassy, ​​where he remained for seven years, to avoid extradition to Sweden.
He was dragged out of the embassy in 2019 and jailed for lack of bail. He has been in London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison ever since, from where he has spent nearly five years fighting extradition to the United States.
The five years in prison is similar to the sentence handed down to Reality Winner, an Air Force veteran and former intelligence contractor, who was sentenced to 63 months after he leaked classified material and sent it to a news outlet.
While in Belmarsh Assange married his partner Stella with whom he had two children when he holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy.