(Washington) Julian Assange is “free” and left the United Kingdom on a plane on Monday after negotiating a guilty plea agreement with the American justice system which demanded his extradition, announced his organization, WikiLeaks.
Prosecuted for exposing hundreds of thousands of confidential documents, this 52-year-old Australian must appear Wednesday at 9 a.m. local time (Tuesday 7 p.m. Eastern time) in federal court in the Mariana Islands, a US Pacific territory, according to court documents made public overnight from Monday to Tuesday.
“Julian Assange is free” and left the United Kingdom and the high security prison near London where he had been incarcerated since 2019, to board a private plane at Stansted airport, WikiLeaks said shortly after, welcoming that he can reunite with his wife, Stella Assange, and their children, “the result of a global campaign”.
The organization then released a 13-second video in which we see him climbing the stairs of the aircraft.
The plane is expected in Bangkok on Tuesday around 11:50 a.m. (12:50 a.m. Eastern Time) to refuel and water. It must then take off again for Saipan, in the Mariana Islands, around 9 p.m. (10 a.m. Eastern time), a Thai official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Now prosecuted for “conspiracy to obtain and disclose information relating to national defense”, Julian Assange should plead guilty to this charge alone, according to the court documents made public, which also cite his accomplice, the American soldier Chelsea Manning, in the origin of this massive leak.
“Discreet diplomacy”
He is expected to be sentenced to 62 months in prison, already served on remand in London, which would allow him to return free to his native Australia.
“Julian is free!” ! ! “, exulted his wife Stella Assange, expressing “immense gratitude” to those who have mobilized “for years” to make his release become “a reality”.
“I am grateful that my son’s ordeal is finally coming to an end. This shows the importance and power of quiet diplomacy,” his mother, Christine Assange, said in a statement carried by Australian media.
“Many have used my son’s situation to promote their own cause. So I am grateful to the invisible, hardworking people who put Julian’s well-being first,” she added.
The Australian government also commented on this outcome, saying that the Assange case had “drawn on for too long” and that his continued detention was no longer of any interest.
This agreement puts an end to a saga of almost 14 years. It came as British justice was due to examine, on July 9 and 10, an appeal by Julian Assange against his extradition to the United States, approved by the United Kingdom government in June 2022.
Punishable by 175 years in prison
PHOTO MATT DUNHAM, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Julian Assange in 2019
He was fighting not to be handed over to American justice, which is pursuing him for having made public since 2010 more than 700,000 confidential documents on American military and diplomatic activities, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Among these documents is a video showing civilians, including two Reuters journalists, killed by fire from an American combat helicopter in Iraq in July 2007.
Targeted by 18 charges, he theoretically faced up to 175 years in prison under the Espionage Act.
Chelsea Manning, for her part, was sentenced to 35 years in prison by a court martial in August 2013, but was released after seven years after her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama.
The latest twist in this long-running affair which has become a symbol for its supporters of the threats weighing on press freedom, two British judges granted Julian Assange the right to appeal against his extradition in May. That appeal was to include whether he would benefit from free speech protection as an alien in the U.S. legal system.
The founder of WikiLeaks was arrested by British police in April 2019 after seven years spent in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, in order to avoid extradition to Sweden in a rape investigation, dismissed the same year.
Since then, calls have increased for US President Joe Biden to drop the charges against him. Australia submitted a formal request to this effect in February, which Mr. Biden said he was considering, raising hope among his supporters.