Assange released from British prison, to plead guilty in the US territory of Northern Mariana Islands.
Assange was released Monday from a high-security British prison where he had been held for five years while he fought extradition to the United States, which sought to prosecute him for revealing military secrets. From there it was scheduled to fly to Saipan, capital of the US territory where Assange is due in court on Wednesday morning.He is expected to be sentenced to five years and two months in prison, with credit for the same amount of time he spent behind bars in Britain.Assange’s wife Stella said he would be a “free man” after the judge signed off on the deal, thanking supporters who have campaigned for his release for years.
Under the deal, Assange is due to return to Australia, where the government said his case had “dragged on for too long” and there was “nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration”.WikiLeaks posted a video on X showing Assange looking out of the window as the private jet landed in Bangkok, then stepping off the plane onto the tarmac.Assange was wanted by Washington for releasing hundreds of thousands of secret US documents from 2010 as head of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
He was indicted by a US federal grand jury in 2019 on 18 counts stemming from WikiLeaks’ publication of a trove of national security documents.“We welcome the release of Julian Assange from detention in the UK,” UN rights office spokeswoman Liz Throssell told AFP in an email. The United States accused Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act. Supporters have warned this means he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.