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Julian Assange is to walk free from a US federal court after a judge accepted a plea deal on an espionage charge in proceedings that conclude a decade of legal wrangling between Washington and the WikiLeaks founder.
Under an agreement with the US Department of Justice, Assange on Wednesday pleaded guilty to one charge and was sentenced shortly after his plea submission. Assange has already served 62 months in a UK jail while awaiting extradition to the US, and prosecutors have not sought additional imprisonment, allowing him to walk free after years of incarceration.
The case is linked to what prosecutors have described as one of the biggest leaks of classified material in US history. Washington has long maintained that intelligence operatives’ lives were put at risk because of the information disclosure — a claim Assange’s lawyers have disputed. His supporters have hailed his group’s efforts to shed light on secretive and powerful organisations, including governments and corporations.
The proceedings were held in Saipan, which is part of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth north of Guam. The territory was chosen because Assange resisted holding the hearings in continental US, and because of its proximity to his home country of Australia, where he is set to travel next, prosecutors said in court filings.
Assange arrived at court alongside Kevin Rudd, Australia’s ambassador to the US and a former prime minister, but declined to take questions from reporters. Stephen Smith, the Australian high commissioner to the UK, also attended the plea hearing.
John Shipton, Assange’s father, told Australian broadcaster ABC that he was “doing cartwheels” at the prospect of his son’s return to the country and praised Australia’s politicians and officials, including Rudd, for the campaign to strike a deal with the US justice department and the White House for his return. He also said the Australian public had a “profound influence” on the long-running case’s resolution.
The campaign to release Assange after 12 years in confinement and captivity will now turn to securing a presidential pardon.
The hearing puts to bed a fraught case that pitted the DoJ against one of its most high-profile and divisive defendants. Long-standing legal disputes linked to the controversial advocate of government transparency have extend across several jurisdictions.
The US case stems from WikiLeaks’ 2010 publication of military and secret documents leaked by Chelsea Manning, the former US army intelligence analyst who, while serving in Iraq, copied hundreds of thousands of military incident logs and about 250,000 diplomatic cables.
Assange was arrested in 2019 at Ecuador’s embassy in London. The country had granted him asylum status after Sweden sought his arrest in relation to a rape investigation but then revoked it.
The WikiLeaks founder on Monday was released from Belmarsh, a high-security prison in London, and boarded a flight from Stansted airport.
Manning was charged and convicted of espionage in connection with the WikiLeaks case. Her 35-year prison sentence was commuted by Barack Obama shortly before he left the White House in 2017.
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