Wikileaks: Julian Assange freed in US plea deal

Following a lengthy legal battle, Wikileaks has announced that Julian Assange, the founder, has departed from the UK after coming to an agreement with US officials. This agreement will involve Assange admitting to criminal charges and subsequently being released.

Assange, who is 52 years old, was accused of conspiring to acquire and reveal classified national defense information.

For a long time, the US has claimed that the Wikileaks documents, which revealed details about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, put lives at risk.

Assange has spent the past five years behind bars in a British jail, where he was resisting being sent to the United States.

As per reports from CBS, the BBC's American ally, Assange will not be detained in the United States and will be given recognition for the time he has already spent in prison in the United Kingdom.

Assange will come back to Australia, as per a letter from the justice department.

On X, the social media site that was once called Twitter, Wikileaks announced that Assange was released from Belmarsh prison on Monday after spending 1,901 days in a cramped cell.

He was allowed to leave Stansted airport in the afternoon, where he got on a plane and left the UK to go back to Australia, according to the statement.

A video that was posted on the internet by Wikileaks seems to show Julian Assange, wearing jeans and a blue shirt, being driven to Stansted Airport before getting on a plane.

The BBC has not been able to confirm the video on their own.

His spouse, Stella Assange, expressed gratitude to the people who have been actively involved in making this happen for many years.

The agreement, in which he will admit to one charge, is expected to be completed in a Northern Mariana Islands court on Wednesday, June 26th.

The faraway Pacific islands, which belong to the US, are much nearer to Australia than the federal courts in Hawaii or the rest of the US mainland.

The Agence France Press reported that a representative for the Australian government mentioned that the situation has been prolonged unnecessarily.

Richard Miller, his lawyer, chose not to give any comments when CBS reached out to him. The BBC has also reached out to his lawyer in the United States.

Him and his legal team always said that the charges against him were driven by political reasons.

In April, US President Joe Biden mentioned that he was thinking about a request from Australia to stop the legal action against Assange.

In a win the next month, the UK High Court decided that Assange could file a fresh appeal against being sent to the US. This gave him the opportunity to contest the US guarantees about how his future trial would be handled and if his freedom of speech would be violated.

Following the decision, Stella, his spouse, informed the public and backers that the Biden government should separate itself from this disgraceful legal action.

American legal authorities initially aimed to prosecute the founder of Wikileaks on 18 charges, primarily under the Espionage Act. These charges were linked to the disclosure of secret US military documents and diplomatic communications regarding the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Wikileaks, started by Assange in 2006, states that it has released more than 10 million documents. The US government later called this release "one of the biggest breaches of classified information in US history".

In 2010, the site posted a video filmed by a US military helicopter that showed over twelve Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters journalists, being fatally shot in Baghdad.

One of Assange's most famous partners, US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, was given a 35-year prison sentence. However, former president Barack Obama later reduced her sentence in 2017.

Assange also encountered distinct accusations of rape and sexual assault in Sweden, which he refuted.

For seven years, he stayed hidden in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, saying that the legal situation in Sweden would result in his extradition to the United States.

In 2019, Swedish officials closed the case, citing that too much time had elapsed since the initial complaint. However, British authorities then arrested him and he faced trial for failing to comply with court orders to be extradited to Sweden.

Despite ongoing legal disputes, Assange has seldom been spotted in public and has allegedly faced health issues for many years, including experiencing a minor stroke while in prison in 2021.