SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands — A plane carrying Julian Assange has landed in Saipan ahead of the WikiLeaks founder’s expected guilty plea in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will set him free to return home to Australia.
The case stems from WikiLeaks’ publication more than a decade ago of hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. military documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.SAIPAN — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will appear in court Wednesday to plead guilty to a felony for publishing U.S. military secrets under a deal that will set him free to return home to Australia after years holed up and imprisoned while fighting extradition to America.
The deal — disclosed Monday night in court papers — represents the final chapter in a more than decade-long legal odyssey over the fate of the eccentric computer expert, whose hugely popular secret-sharing website made him a cause célèbre among press freedom advocates who said he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing. U.S. prosecutors have said his actions recklessly put the country's national security at risk.
His wife, Stella Assange, told the BBC from Australia that it had been “touch and go” over 72 hours whether the deal would go ahead but she felt “elated” at the news. A lawyer who married the WikiLeaks founder in prison in 2022, she said details of the agreement would be made public once the judge had signed off on it.
The guilty plea resolves a criminal case brought by Republican President Donald Trump's administration over the receipt and publication of war logs and diplomatic cables that detailed U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prosecutors alleged that Assange conspired with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain the records and published them without regard to American national security, including by releasing the names of human sources who provided information to U.S.
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