In accordance with an agreement reached with the American justice system, the whistleblower, accused of having published hundreds of thousands of confidential 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 Mariana Islands, closed the nearly 14-year legal saga of Julian Assange on Wednesday June 26.
The Australian whistleblower and WikiLeaks founder accused of publishing hundreds of thousands of classified US documents in the 2010s has pleaded guilty to obtaining and disclosing national defence 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 on a plane to Canberra, the Australian capital. 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 has been in a terrible state for five years” and wish “be in contact with nature”underlined his wife, Stella Assange.
The whistleblower left the United Kingdom on Monday to be tried before the federal court in Saipan, after accepting the principle of a guilty plea. Under the terms of this agreement, he was only prosecuted for the sole charge of “conspiracy to obtain and disclose information relating to national defense”. He was sentenced to 62 months in prison already covered by the five years served in pre-trial 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”.