Julian Assange is free
Wikileaks spokesperson Julian Assange pleads guilty to one charge and is released. He has to go to the USA briefly, but not really.
(Image: Londisland / shutterstock.com)
Julian Assange will be released. This is according to a court document filed on Monday. According to the document, the Wikileaks founder will be allowed to leave prison in England and travel to his home country of Australia – but not directly.
Assange left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of June 24, according to a Wikileaks X-Post. The High Court in London granted him bail and he was released at Stansted Airport in the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and left the UK.
The deal negotiated by Assange's lawyers with the US prosecution stipulates that Assange will first travel to the Northern Mariana Islands and plead guilty in a US federal district court to one count of conspiracy to disclose secrets about the military defense of the United States of America. This is a felony in the USA.
This court date in Saipan is scheduled for Wednesday, 9 a.m. local time. After the court date, the Australian will be allowed to fly home, unless the judge decides otherwise. The Northern Marianas is an unincorporated territory of the United States with internal autonomy and its own constitution, but a US federal court. In this way, Assange can avoid entering the continental US, and the US prosecution can tell itself that it has saved face and secured a conviction.
Another unusual aspect of the procedure is that the sentence will be announced on the same day, and Assange will be allowed to travel on immediately. He will probably be given credit for his long extradition detention in the UK. Julian Assange has been on remand in the British high-security Belmarsh prison since 2019. The US authorities accuse him of betraying secrets, conspiracy and cyberattacks on the Pentagon and have been pursuing his extradition for years. According to the US government, the Australian journalist endangered the lives of US citizens by publishing secret documents on Wikileaks. Assange, who has invoked the freedom of the press, faces up to 175 years in prison in the proceedings.
The US criminal case is called USA v Julian Paul Assange and was actually pending in the US Federal District Court for Eastern Virginia under case number 1:18-cr-00111. It is now expected to enter the final phase at the US Federal District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands under case no. 24-CR-14. The judge is Ramona Manglona.
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