Hacker, Spy, Or Journalist?

After spending 5 years in detention in London's high security Belmarsh prison,  WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has made  a plea deal with the US Government. He will plead guilty to one charge of espionage and return home to Australia after years fighting extradition from Britain.

US authorities have agreed to drop their demand for Assange to be extradited from Britain after reaching a plea deal with the WikiLeaks founder.

In return for pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information, Assange will be sentenced to time served, 62 months, the time he has already spent in a British prison, according to court documents.Once the guilty plea is accepted by a judge, the 52-year-old will be free to return to Australia, the country of his birth.

Julian Assange has “paid his dues” over his WikiLeaks disclosures, according to the former US director of national intelligence. 

Assange went to a hearing on the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. “The fact that there is a guilty plea, under the Espionage Act in relation to obtaining and disclosing National Defence information is obviously a very serious concern for journalists and national security journalists in general,” his wife has said to journalists. She said it had been “a rough few years” and that she would not really believe he was free until they were reunited. She said she was still worried something would go wrong.

Stella Assange, a lawyer who has worked on his campaign for release for many years. The couple have two children, who are in Australia with her, but are yet to be told that their father has been released. “All I told them was that there was a big surprise,” she told the BBC earlier, saying the details of Assange’s release needed to be kept under wraps while they were travelling to Australia, and “obviously no one can stop a five and a seven-year-old from, you know, shouting it from the rooftops at any given moment.”

Numerous advocates of press freedom have argued that criminally charging Assange represents a threat to free speech. 

“Julian Assange is free,” WikiLeaks said in a statement on Twitter / X “He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. 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 UK.”
A video posted on X by WikiLeaks showed Assange dressed in a blue shirt and jeans signing a document before boarding a private jet.

The court the hearing takes place in the US commonwealth territory of Saipan in the Marianas Islands, over 5,000 miles from the mainland where he would have stood trial on multiple charges, in a deal apparently arranged by the government of Prime Minster Anthonu Albanese, after which he will return to Australia.

Wikileaks   |   Guardian   |   Telegraph    |    BBC   |  Indpenedent   |    Sky   |   AlJazeera   |   CNN   |  Rolling Stone 

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