‘Julian Assange is free’: WikiLeaks founder leaves UK, will plead guilty in deal with US
- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to return to Australia in plea bargain agreement with the US Justice Department
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is due to plead guilty on Wednesday to violating US espionage law, in a deal that will end his imprisonment in Britain and allow him to return home to Australia, ending a 14-year legal odyssey.
Assange, 52, has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents, according to filings in the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.
The deal marks the end of a legal saga in which Assange spent years in a British high-security jail and in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and fought allegations of sex crimes in Sweden, while battling extradition to the US, where he faced 18 criminal charges.
The US government viewed him as a reckless villain who had endangered the lives of agents through WikiLeaks’ mass release of secret US documents – the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history.
But to free press advocates and his supporters, which included world leaders, celebrities and some prominent journalists, he is a hero for exposing wrongdoing and alleged war crimes, and was persecuted for embarrassing the US authorities.
