Surprising turning point: the founder of Wikileaks has left London. He wants to plead guilty and return to his native Australia.
Assange at an airport in London on Monday. The initial destination should be the Northern Mariana Islands
WASHINGTON taz | Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and the US Department of Justice have reached an agreement in criminal proceedings that will allow the 52-year-old to return to his homeland as a free man. Various American media unanimously reported this on Monday evening (local time in the US). The agreement ends a years-long legal dispute that has caused polarization among the population and experts.
Wikileaks confirmed Assange’s release from a British prison. In a post on X, Assange was seen boarding a plane at London’s Stansted Airport to leave England. According to Wikileaks, Assange was released on Monday from a high-security prison in London, where he had been held for the past five years. He is expected to appear in a U.S. federal court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the western Pacific Ocean.
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According to reports, Assange is expected to plead guilty to one charge of illegally obtaining and publishing classified US military information. For this offense he receives a prison sentence of 62 months, exactly the time he has already spent in a prison in Great Britain. A trial is expected to take place later this week. The born Australian could then return to his homeland as a free man.
Last month, a court in London ruled that Assange can continue to legally challenge his extradition to the US. It was the latest capital in a process that began fourteen years ago with the publication of classified US military information and a video of a US airstrike in Iraq.
In 2019, the Ecuadorian government revoked Assange’s refugee status after he had been sheltered in the South American country’s embassy in London for more than seven years. Shortly afterwards he was arrested by British authorities. The US government under former President Donald Trump subsequently filed charges against Assange in May 2019. The US Department of Justice accused him of playing a key role in “one of the largest cases of misuse of classified information in the history of the United States.”
Journalists’ associations feared that a precedent would be set
According to the US indictment, Assange and Wikileaks are said to have actively sought classified information from the US government from 2009 onwards. Former US military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning then forwarded thousands of classified information in her possession to Wikileaks. Manning was arrested in 2010 and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Former US President Barack Obama has suspended the sentence after seven years in prison.
The US government had accused Assange of not carefully checking the information he received before publishing it, putting people at risk. “No responsible actor, journalist or otherwise, would knowingly publish the names of people he knows are confidential human sources in a war zone, exposing them to grave danger,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers said at the time the indictment. .
The Australian government has been calling on US President Joe Biden and his government for years to drop the criminal case against Assange. Biden himself confirmed in April that his administration was certainly considering this.
Human rights organizations and journalist associations have also been looking critically at the case for years. Journalists’ associations in particular have repeatedly expressed concerns that if Assange were convicted for his violation of the US Espionage Act, it could have dramatic consequences for the work of journalists. The US government could use the Assange case as a precedent to hold other journalists accountable for their investigations and use of classified documents.
Post shows Assange at the airport
The agreement between the US Department of Justice and Assange now also means that a hearing scheduled for July in the extradition process that has been going on for years is no longer necessary.
“WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories on government corruption and human rights abuses and held the powerful accountable for their actions. As editor-in-chief, Julian had to pay a high price for these principles – and for people’s right to be informed about them,” said a Wikileaks post on X.