ALBAWABA - Following years of stalling in international courts, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has agreed to plead guilty to a felony charge in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department, allowing him to walk freely and return to his home in Australia.
"JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREE", WikiLeaks' official account announced on X. The media company released a statement, adding that Assange had left the United Kingdom after he was "granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted Airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the country".
"WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions. As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles, and for the people’s right to know," WikiLeaks said.
Assange is set to plead guilty to an Espionage Act allegation of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and publish sensitive national defense material, according to a letter submitted in court.
Assange was released from a British prison on Monday and is scheduled to appear in federal court later this week in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth in the Western Pacific.
Assange's wife Stella took to X to express her gratitude for her husband's release from prison.
"Words cannot express our immense gratitude to YOU- yes YOU, who have all mobilized for years and years to make this come true. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU." she wrote.
Assange is likely to fly to Australia after his plea and sentence on Wednesday morning local time in Saipan, the largest island in the Northern Mariana Islands. Prosecutors stated that the hearing is being held there because Assange refuses to come to the continental United States, and the court is near to Australia.
Assange spent the last five years in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London, where he argued that there was a political motive behind his extradition. Assange was wanted on 17 counts of acquiring classified military secrets, breaking into a Pentagon computer network, and breaking the U.S. Espionage Act.
Following the publication of hundreds of thousands of secret papers regarding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Assange was the target of legal action in 2010.
