US prosecutors have reached a deal with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that requires the long-conflicted publisher to plead guilty to an espionage charge for his role in making public classified documents related to US wars. in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The agreement, which follows more than a decade of efforts by Assange, 52, to avoid extradition from the United Kingdom, would end one of the longest-running national security investigations in US history. The deal was first revealed in court documents made public in the United Kingdom.
Assange and his legal team, who have denied the accusations leveled by the United States, could not immediately be reached for comment.
“Julian Assange is free,” WikiLeaks wrote in a statement. published in X. “He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of June 24, after having spent 1,901 days there.”
TO letter U.S. prosecutors appearing in the Northern Mariana Islands District Court on Monday say Assange will plead guilty at a hearing on Wednesday in Sapian, the island territory’s capital, after refusing to travel to the mainland United States. He is then expected to return to his home country, Australia, having already served his planned 62-month sentence in London prison.
The case against Assange focuses on the publication of more than 750,000 American documents stolen by WikiLeaks between 2009 and 2011. It has attracted enormous attention due to its clear implications for press freedom internationally. Organizations such as the Committee to Protect American Journalists have warned for years that the case could seriously jeopardize journalists’ ability to obtain and publish classified information, although the nation’s highest court has long recognized the journalists’ right to do so.
Ahead of the 2016 US presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, WikiLeaks published a trove of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee. The leak, which embarrassed the Democratic National Committee and earned Assange praise from right-wing figures, was later revealed to be the work of notorious Russian hacking groups known as Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, both affiliated with the intelligence agency. Moscow GRU military.
US prosecutors initially charged Assange with a single count under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for allegedly conspiring with Chelsea Manning, who provided WikiLeaks with a trove of classified material related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to gain access. unauthorized access to government computers. Prosecutors later added 17 additional charges under the Espionage Act, a move widely condemned as an attack on the free press.
Assange, forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2019 after seven years of asylum, is being held in London’s Belmarsh prison awaiting the outcome of his extradition hearings, which were repeatedly delayed during the Covid-19 pandemic. His lawyers argued that, due to his deteriorating mental health, extradition to the United States would increase the likelihood of suicide.
US prosecutors won, on appeal, permission to extradite the award-winning journalist, who married his long-term partner, Stella Moris, while in prison in 2022, offering UK courts a series of written assurances. Among other concessions, the United States promised not to subject Assange to “special administrative measures,” a term that refers to the practice of tapping the phone calls of certain defendants citing national security concerns.
“I am now sure that this period of our lives has come to an end,” Moris, now Assange, said in a video. pre-recorded last week. “I think this time next week, Julian will be free.”
Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, said in the same video captured outside Belmarsh that she hoped to see Assange one last time within its walls. “If you’re seeing this, it means he’s out.”
