In accordance with an agreement reached with the courts, the founder of WikiLeaks, accused of having published hundreds of thousands of confidential American documents in the 2010s, pleaded guilty to obtaining and disclosing information on national defense.
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“You will be able to walk out of this courtroom a free man.” Judge Ramona V. Manglona, at the end of a quick hearing at the US federal court in Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands, closed the nearly 14-year legal saga of Julian Assange on Wednesday June 26. The Australian whistleblower and founder of WikiLeaks, accused of publishing hundreds of thousands of confidential US documents in the 2010s, has pleaded guilty to obtaining and disclosing national defense information.
“I encouraged my source”the American soldier Chelsea Manning, at the origin of this massive leak, “to provide material that was classified”, he admitted on the stand. He then left the court without making a statement. “Today is a historic day”welcomed one of his lawyers, Jennifer Robinson.
Julian Assange left the Mariana Islands, this American territory in the Pacific, aboard a plane heading to Canberra, the Australian capital, where he is expected in the evening. However, he will not have the right to return to the United States without authorization, the US Department of Justice said in a press release. “The priority now is for Julian to get healthy again”, “He’s been in a terrible state for five years.” and wish “be in contact with nature”underlined his wife, Stella Assange, who said she could not “stop crying” of joy since the announcement of the release.
The whistleblower left the United Kingdom, where he had been imprisoned for five years, on Monday to stand trial in federal court in Saipan after agreeing to a plea deal. Under the terms of the agreement, he was now only charged with “conspiracy to obtain and disclose information relating to national defense.” He was sentenced to 62 months in prison, which was already covered by the five years he had served in pretrial detention.
The United Nations welcomed this release, saying that the case had raised “a range of human rights concerns”. Former US Vice President Mike Pence described the agreement as “false justice” Who “dishonors the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our armed forces”.