The whistleblower and founder of Wikileaks has reached a settlement with the US justice system.
Julian Assange has been persecuted by the US justice system for revealing hundreds of thousands of confidential documents. He finally reached an agreement with the US justice system whereby he would regain his freedom after five years of pre-trial detention in the UK.
Assange has left the UK
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, left the UK, where he had been held since 2019, on Monday June 24. He negotiated an agreement with the American justice system, which was demanding his extradition. He was accused of disclosing more than 700,000 confidential documents on US military and diplomatic activities, notably in Iraq and Afghanistan, from 2010 onwards.
62 months already served
The 52-year-old Australian boarded a private plane at Stansted airport to appear in federal court in the Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific. He is now charged with “conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information” and is expected to plead guilty to this charge alone. He is expected to be sentenced to 62 months in prison, already served on remand in London, which would allow him to return freely to his native Australia.
He was facing 175 years in prison
This agreement puts an end to almost 14 years of persecution. Julian Assange had been fighting to avoid extradition to the USA, which was prosecuting him for leaking hundreds of thousands of confidential documents, including a video showing civilians, including two Reuters journalists, killed by US helicopter fire in Iraq in July 2007. Under the Espionage Act, he theoretically faced up to 175 years in prison.
The Australian government also reacted to the outcome, saying that Assange’s case had “dragged on for too long” and that there was no longer any point in keeping him in detention. “Many have used my son’s situation to further their own cause,” said Christine Assange, Julian Assange’s mother, in a statement.
Extradition to Sweden avoided
The WikiLeaks founder was arrested by British police in April 2019 after spending seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden in a rape investigation that was dismissed the same year. His accomplice, the American soldier Chelsea Manning, who was behind the massive leak, had been sentenced in August 2013 to 35 years in prison by a court martial, but was released after seven years.
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