Why Julian Assange has pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and been released from prison
Julian Assange has reached a deal with US authorities which will allow him to return to his native Australia after he pleads guilty to a conspiracy charge.
The nearly-decade-and-half-long saga of Julian Assange avoiding extradition, first to Sweden and then to the United States appears to be coming to an end. The founder of WikiLeaks, if all goes as planned, will plead guilty to a single conspiracy charge this week in a US federal court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands.
Assange will reportedly be sentenced to 62 months but will not remain in custody as the past five years that he has spent in a British prison will be credited toward his time served. After the court hearing he is expected to return to Australia where he was born.
Why Julian Assange has pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and been released from prison
According to WikiLeaks, Assange has already been released from high-security Belmarsh Prison on the outskirts of London and left the United Kingdom en route to Saipan. He will appear in federal court in Saipan at 9 am local time Wednesday (7 pm EDT Tuesday).
Assange will plead guilty to “conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information” in relation to the 2009 publication of classified information by WikiLeaks. The massive dump consisted of tens of thousands of sensitive reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as US State Department cables.
In the court filing the government states that Assange “knowingly and unlawfully conspired with Chelsea Manning” to commit the criminal offense to which he will plead guilty. WikiLeaks received the trove of materials from Manning, a military intelligence analyst who had been deployed at a forward operating base in Iraq.
Manning was convicted in a court-martial for violating the Espionage Act and sentenced to 35 years of incarceration. She had served nearly four years behind bars when President Obama commuted her sentence calling it “very disproportionate” compared to sentences other leakers had received.