Freedom for Assange: WikiLeaks founder accepts US plea deal
On the 24th June, Julian Assange left the UK high security facility Belmarsh prison to aboard a flight to Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands where he intends to plead guilty to the charge of conspiracy to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents, according to Al Jazeera.
After doing so he will be able to return to his home country of Australia, after 1,901 days in prison and 7 years of political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy. The release came as a result of multiple public campaigns in support of Assange and renewed pressure by the Australian government on the Biden administration to drop the case.
The platform Wikileaks gained notoriety in 2010 for the release of over 400,000 classified military documents on the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan along with unseen footage of war crimes committed by the U.S. Military. The 18 charges Assange received for his role in publishing the documents from the U.S. government would have resulted in 175 years of imprisonment for the journalist.
Al Jazeera and agencies
