WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is due to plead guilty on Wednesday to violating U.S. espionage law, in a deal that will end his imprisonment in Britain and allow him to return home to Australia, ending a 14-year legal odyssey.
Assange, 52, has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defense documents, according to filings in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.
He is due to be sentenced to 62 months of time already served at a hearing in Saipan at 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday (2300 GMT Tuesday). The island in the Pacific was chosen due to Assange’s opposition to travelling to the mainland U.S. and for its proximity to Australia, prosecutors said.
Assange left Belmarsh prison in the UK on Monday before being bailed by the UK High Court and boarding a flight that afternoon, Wikileaks said in a statement posted on social media platform X.
Timeline of Wikileaks founder’s legal battles
Following are some key events and details in Assange’s life:
July 1971 – Assange is born in Townsville, Australia, to parents involved in theatre. As a teenager, he gains a reputation as a computer programmer. In 1995, he is fined for computer hacking but avoids prison on condition he does not offend again.
2006 – Assange founds WikiLeaks, creating an internet-based “dead letter drop” for leakers of classified or sensitive information.
April 5, 2010 – WikiLeaks releases leaked video from a U.S. helicopter showing an air strike that killed civilians in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff.
July 25, 2010 – WikiLeaks releases more than 91,000 documents, mostly secret U.S. military reports about the Afghanistan war.
October, 2010 – WikiLeaks releases 400,000 classified military files chronicling the Iraq war. The next month, it releases thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, including candid views of foreign leaders and blunt assessments of security threats.
Nov. 18, 2010 – A Swedish court orders Assange’s arrest on sex crime allegations, which he denies. He is arrested in Britain the next month on a European arrest warrant but freed on bail.
February 2011 – London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court orders Assange’s extradition to Sweden. He appeals.
June 14, 2012 – The British Supreme Court rejects Assange’s final appeal. Five days later, he takes refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London and seeks political asylum, which Ecuador grants in August 2012.
May 19, 2017 – Swedish prosecutors discontinue their investigation, saying it is impossible to proceed while Assange is in the Ecuadorean embassy.
April 11, 2019 – After Ecuador revokes his political asylum, Assange is carried out of the embassy and arrested. He is sentenced on May 1 to 50 weeks in prison by a British court for skipping bail. He completes the sentence early but remains in jail pending extradition hearings.
May 13, 2019 – Swedish prosecutors reopen their investigation and say they will seek Assange’s extradition.
June 11, 2019 – The U.S. Justice Department formally asks Britain to extradite Assange to the United States to face charges that he conspired to hack U.S. government computers and violated an espionage law.
Nov. 19, 2019 – Swedish prosecutors drop their investigation, saying the evidence is not strong enough to bring charges, in part because of the passage of time.
Feb. 21, 2020 – A London court begins the first part of extradition hearings.
Jan. 4, 2021 – A British judge rules that Assange should not be extradited to the U.S. to face criminal charges, saying his mental health problems mean he would be at risk of suicide.
Dec. 10, 2021 – The U.S. wins an appeal against the ruling after a judge says he is satisfied with a U.S. package of assurances about the conditions of Assange’s detention.
March 14, 2022 – Britain’s Supreme Court denies Assange permission to appeal against the decision to extradite him to the United States.
March 23, 2022 – Assange marries his long-term partner Stella Moris, the mother of his two children fathered inside the Ecuadorean embassy, inside a British high-security prison.
June 17, 2022 – Britain orders Assange’s extradition to the United States, prompting Assange to appeal.
June, 2023 – Judge at London’s High Court rules Assange has no legal grounds to appeal.
Feb. 20, 2024 – Assange launches what his supporters say will be his final attempt to prevent extradition.
March 26, 2024 – The extradition is put on hold when the court says the U.S. must provide assurances that Assange will not face a potential death penalty.
May 20, 2024 – The High Court gives Assange permission to launch a full appeal against his extradition on grounds that, as a foreign national on trial, he might not be able to rely on the First Amendment right to free speech that U.S. citizens enjoy.
June 24, 2024 – The U.S. Justice Department and Assange reveal a deal in which he will plead guilty to one criminal count and be sentenced to time served.
“This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations,” the statement said.
A video posted on X by Wikileaks showed Assange dressed in a blue shirt and jeans signing a document before boarding a private jet with the markings of charter firm VistaJet.
He will return to Australia after the hearing, the Wikileaks statement added, referring to the hearing in Saipan.
“Julian is free!!!!” his wife, Stella Assange, said in a post on X.
“Words cannot express our immense gratitude to YOU – yes YOU, who have all mobilised for years and years to make this come true.”
The only VistaJet plane that departed Stansted on Monday afternoon was headed to Bangkok, FlightRadar24 data shows. A spokesperson for Assange in Australia declined to comment on his flight plans. VistaJet did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Australian government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has been pressing for Assange’s release but declined to comment on the legal proceedings as they were ongoing.
“Prime Minister Albanese has been clear – Mr Assange’s case has dragged on for too long and there is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration,” a government spokesperson said.
A lawyer for Assange did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
HISTORIC CHARGES
WikiLeaks in 2010 released hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. military documents on Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – the largest security breaches of their kind in U.S. military history – along with swaths of diplomatic cables.
Assange was indicted during former President Donald Trump’s administration over WikiLeaks’ mass release of secret U.S. documents, which were leaked by Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. military intelligence analyst who was also prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
Who is Julian Assange?
Assange was born in Townsville, Australia, in July 1971.
In his teens, he gained a reputation as a sophisticated computer programmer and in 1995 he pleaded guilty, and was fined, for hacking. In his late 20s, he went to Melbourne University to study mathematics and physics.
WHAT IS WIKILEAKS?
Assange launched WikiLeaks in 2006, creating a web-based “dead letter drop” for would-be leakers.
The website rose to prominence in April 2010 when it published a classified video showing a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff.
During 2010 it released more than 90,000 classified U.S. military documents on the war in Afghanistan, and about 400,000 secret U.S. files on the Iraq war – the largest security breaches of their kind in U.S. military history.
It also released 250,000 secret diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies around the world in 2011, with some published by newspapers such as The New York Times and Britain’s Guardian.
The leaks angered and embarrassed U.S. politicians and military officials, who said it put lives at risk.
Ex-army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning served seven years in a military prison for leaking messages and cables to WikiLeaks, before being released by President Barack Obama.
The group returned to the spotlight ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election when it published tens of thousands of emails belonging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.
A U.S. Senate report in 2020 said Russia had used WikiLeaks to help Republican Donald Trump to victory in that election. Trump dismissed the report as a hoax and Russia always denied interfering in the election.
ARREST AND START OF LEGAL BATTLE
A Swedish court ordered Assange’s detention in November 2010 as a result of an investigation into allegations of sex crimes made by two female Swedish WikiLeaks volunteers. He was arrested by British police in December 2010 on a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) issued by Sweden.
Assange denied the allegations and said from the outset that it was a pretext to extradite him to the United States to face charges over the WikiLeaks releases.
In June 2012, shortly after the UK Supreme Court rejected his final challenge against extradition to Sweden, he entered the Ecuadorean embassy in London seeking asylum.
ASSANGE’S SEVEN YEARS IN ECUADOREAN EMBASSY
Ecuador granted Assange political asylum in August 2012. British police mounted a round-the-clock guard to prevent his escape, saying he would be arrested if he left.
The impasse left Assange living in cramped quarters in the embassy. Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation in 2017 but British police said he would still be arrested if he left the embassy over his failure to surrender to bail.
During his time in the embassy he had two children with his partner Stella Moris. He married her in 2022 in Belmarsh prison.
EMBASSY IMPASSE ENDS, U.S. CASE BEGINS
On April 11, 2019, Assange was carried out of the embassy and arrested after Ecuador revoked his asylum.
The following month he was jailed for 50 weeks for breaching his bail conditions. In June 2019, the U.S. Justice Department formally asked Britain to extradite him to face 18 charges that he conspired to hack U.S. government computers and violated espionage laws.
Assange completed his sentence in September 2019 but remained in Belmarsh maximum security prison pending extradition hearings.
In 2021, a British judge ruled Assange should not be extradited, saying his mental health problems meant he would be at risk of suicide.
The U.S. authorities won an appeal in December 2021, after they offered to allow Assange to serve any sentence in Australia if convicted.
FINAL LEGAL BATTLE
In June 2022, Britain approved his extradition and the following year a judge at London’s High Court turned down an initial request to challenge that decision.
In February this year, Assange’s legal team sought permission for a final appeal, arguing the case was politically motivated, an assault on freedom of speech and journalism, and that Assange could potentially face the death penalty if convicted.
The High Court rejected his arguments, but said the U.S. had to provide assurances he would not face the death penalty and would be entitled to rely on the First Amendment right to free speech.
However, in a boost for Assange, the High Court later said the U.S. submissions were not sufficient and gave him permission to conduct a full appeal, a process that would take months.
END OF AN ODYSSEY?
Now, under a plea agreement with U.S. authorities, Assange will plead guilty in a U.S. court in the commonwealth state of Northern Mariana Islands to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defence documents, according to legal filings. He is due to be sentenced to 62 months of time already served.
The trove of more than 700,000 documents included diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts such as a 2007 video of a U.S. Apache helicopter firing at suspected insurgents in Iraq, killing a dozen people including two Reuters news staff. That video was released in 2010.
The charges against Assange sparked outrage among his many global supporters who have long argued that Assange as the publisher of Wikileaks should not face charges typically used against federal government employees who steal or leak information.
Many press freedom advocates have argued that criminally charging Assange represents a threat to free speech.
“A plea deal would avert the worst-case scenario for press freedom, but this deal contemplates that Assange will have served five years in prison for activities that journalists engage in every day,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of free speech organization Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.
“It will cast a long shadow over the most important kinds of journalism, not just in this country but around the world.”
LONG ODYSSEY
Assange was first arrested in Britain in 2010 on a European arrest warrant after Swedish authorities said they wanted to question him over sex-crime allegations that were later dropped. He fled to Ecuador’s embassy, where he remained for seven years, to avoid extradition to Sweden.
He was dragged out of the embassy in 2019 and jailed for skipping bail. He has been in London’s Belmarsh top security jail ever since, from where he has for almost five years been fighting extradition to the United States.
Those five years of confinement are similar to the sentence imposed on Reality Winner, an Air Force veteran and former intelligence contractor, who was sentenced to 63 months after she removed classified materials and mailed them to a news outlet.
While in Belmarsh Assange married his partner Stella with whom he had two children while he was holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy.
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