After an extended legal struggle, WikiLeaks announced that its founder, Julian Assange, has left the UK following a deal with US authorities. This agreement will see Assange plead guilty to criminal charges but ultimately gain his freedom.
Assange, 52, faced charges of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information. The US has long argued that WikiLeaks' disclosures, which included information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, endangered lives. Assange has spent the past five years in a British prison, fighting extradition to the US.
According to CBS, the BBC’s US partner, Assange will not serve time in US custody and will receive credit for his time incarcerated in the UK. He is set to return to Australia, as confirmed by a letter from the US Justice Department.
WikiLeaks reported on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Assange left Belmarsh prison on Monday after 1,901 days. He was released at Stansted Airport in the afternoon and boarded a plane back to Australia. Video shared by WikiLeaks shows Assange, dressed in jeans and a blue shirt, being driven to Stansted before boarding an aircraft. The BBC has not independently verified the video.
Assange’s wife, Stella, expressed gratitude on Twitter to supporters who had "mobilized for years" to achieve this outcome.
The deal, which includes a guilty plea to one charge, is set to be finalized in a court in the Northern Mariana Islands on June 26. These remote Pacific islands, a US commonwealth, are closer to Australia than other US federal courts.
A spokesperson for Australia’s government told Agence France-Presse that the case had "dragged on for too long." Assange's attorney, Richard Miller, declined to comment, and the BBC has contacted his US-based lawyer.
Assange and his legal team have long argued that the case against him was politically motivated. In April, US President Joe Biden considered a request from Australia to drop the prosecution against Assange. In May, the UK High Court allowed Assange to bring a new appeal against extradition to the US, challenging US assurances regarding his trial and free speech rights.
Following the ruling, Stella Assange urged the Biden administration to "distance itself from this shameful prosecution."
US prosecutors initially sought to try Assange on 18 counts, primarily under the Espionage Act, for releasing confidential US military and diplomatic documents. WikiLeaks, founded by Assange in 2006, claims to have published over 10 million documents, which the US government called "one of the largest compromises of classified information in US history."
One notable publication by WikiLeaks in 2010 included a video showing a US military helicopter killing over a dozen Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in Baghdad. Chelsea Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst and a prominent WikiLeaks collaborator, was sentenced to 35 years in prison but had her sentence commuted by President Barack Obama in 2017.
Assange also faced separate allegations of rape and sexual assault in Sweden, which he denied. He spent seven years in Ecuador’s London embassy, fearing extradition to the US via Sweden. Swedish authorities dropped the case in 2019, citing the elapsed time since the complaint, but UK authorities then took Assange into custody for evading court orders.
Despite ongoing legal battles, Assange has rarely been seen in public and has reportedly suffered from poor health, including a minor stroke in prison in 2021.
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