WikiLeaks Founder Set to be Freed in Deal, Pleads Guilty to Certain Espionage Charges

Julian Assange, founder of the infamous website WikiLeaks, is due to plead guilty on charges of espionage against the United States that will allow him to walk free after a 14-year-old legal battle that spanned multiple continents and was centered around the publication of classified documents.

Assange – who has been involved in perhaps the largest security breach of its kind in the United States – has agreed to plead guilty to one single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US defense documents. He left Belmarsh Prison in the U.K. on Monday, after having spent five years there, before his bail was approved by the U.K. High Court, according to a statement by WikiLeaks that was posted on X.

A video posted by WikiLeaks showed Assange in a blue shirt and jeans signing a document before boarding a private jet with the markings of charter firm VistaJet. The only VistaJet plane that was set to depart the area that afternoon was one that was headed to Bangkok, as shown by FlightRadar24 data. Neither a spokesperson for Assange nor VistaJet commented on the matter.

He is expected to appear later this week in the US Federal Court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US Commonwealth, to plead guilty to the charge that falls under the Espionage Act, the Justice Department said in a letter filed in court.

“This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grassroots organizers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations,” WikiLeaks posted on X. The statement also added that Assange would return to Australia after the hearing. Led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the Australian Government had been pressing for Assange’s release but declined to comment on any ongoing legal proceedings.

In 2010, WikiLeaks released hundreds of classified documents regarding Washington’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, leading to one of the largest security breaches in the country. Among the 700,000 files published was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including 2 Reuters journalists. He had been heralded by many as a successful journalist who exposed military wrongdoings, but his reputation had been tarnished by rape allegations which he denies.

Assange was indicted in 2019 under the presidency of former President Donald Trump, which accused Assange of helping U.S. Intelligence Analyst Chelsea Manning steal diplomatic cables and secret files that were published by WikiLeaks. Chelsea Manning is also being prosecuted under the Espionage Act. The charges against Assange led to widespread fury, with claims that such action against journalists who exposed government wrongdoing is a threat to press freedom, and that he should not face the charges that would be typically used against federal government employees who steal or leak information.

The plea agreement comes months after President Joe Biden claimed he was considering a request from Australia to drop the U.S.’s push to prosecute Assange.

In 2010, Assange was arrested in Britain on a European arrest warrant that claimed Swedish authorities wanted to question him over certain sex-crime allegations, which were later dropped. To avoid extradition to Sweden, he fled to the Ecuadorian Embassy in Britain and remained there for seven years. In 2019, he was taken out of the embassy and arrested for skipping bail. He has since been confined in London’s Belmarsh top-security jail, where he has been fighting extradition to the United States.

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