Australian whistleblower and WikiLeaks founder Julien Assange has been released from prison in the United Kingdom and is expected to be released on Wednesday after pleading guilty in a US court, the epilogue to a long legal saga.
Prosecuted for publishing hundreds of thousands of confidential American documents, this 52-year-old Australian computer scientist is due to appear on Wednesday at 9 a.m. local time (Tuesday 11 p.m. GMT) in federal court in the Mariana Islands, a US Pacific territory, according to court documents made public during the night from Monday to Tuesday.
After leaving the United Kingdom on Monday from London’s Stansted Airport, according to WikiLeaks, Julian Assange’s plane landed in Bangkok on Tuesday around 12:30 p.m. (5:30 a.m. GMT) for a technical stopover, before taking off again at 9:25 p.m. (2:25 p.m. GMT) for the island of Saipan, capital of the Marianas. Julian Assange “will be a free man once the agreement (to plead guilty, Editor’s note) is validated by the judge”, which will happen “tomorrow” Wednesday, his wife Stella told the BBC on Tuesday from Australia.
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As court documents indicate, the founder of WikiLeaks agrees to plead guilty to one count, relating to “obtaining and disclosing information on national defense”, according to Stella Assange.
Julian Assange is now being prosecuted for a single charge (“conspiracy to obtain and disclose information relating to national defense”), according to the documents which also cite his accomplice, the American soldier Chelsea Manning, at the origin of this massive leak.
Stella Assange, who had two children with the founder of WikiLeaks, refused to give further details on this agreement which, she said, will be “made public”.
“The priority now is for Julian to regain his health”, “he has been in a terrible state for five years” and wants “to be in contact with nature”, added the South African lawyer. “That’s what we both want right now, and to have time and privacy and just start this new chapter.”
“Whirlwind of emotions”
The end of this long legal drama plunged him into a “whirlwind of emotions,” Ms. Assange continued to the BBC. “It’s finally over.”
She also launched an appeal for donations to pay the 520,000 dollars (485,000 euros) that her husband must reimburse the Australian government for the charter of the plane which will take him to Australia. He was “not allowed to take a commercial flight,” she said on X (ex-Twitter).
She also called on the whistleblower’s supporters to monitor the flight on specialized sites and follow the hashtag “AssangeJet”, writing: “We need all eyes on this flight, in case something goes wrong.”
Julian Assange should be sentenced to 62 months in prison, already served on remand in London, which would allow him to return free to his native Australia.
The Northern Mariana Islands court was chosen because of Mr Assange’s refusal to travel to the US mainland and the territory’s proximity to Australia, according to a court filing.
The United Nations welcomed the release, saying the case had raised “a range of human rights concerns”.
“I am grateful that my son’s ordeal is finally coming to an end,” Christine Assange said in a statement released by Australian media.
Former US Vice President Mike Pence called the agreement “false justice” which “dishonors the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our armed forces”.
A long-time supporter of the founder of Wikileaks, Reporters Without Borders hailed a “long overdue victory for journalism and press freedom”.
The Assange affair weighed on relations between the United States and Australia. For Emma Shortis, a researcher at the think tank The Australia Institute, “it was simply impossible for this not to become a problem for the alliance” American-Australian.
Punishable by 175 years in prison
The agreement ends 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 British government in June 2022.
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 a Reuters journalist and his driver, 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 was sentenced to 35 years in prison by a court martial in August 2013, but released after seven years after her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama.
Latest twist in this affair which has become a symbol of the threats to press freedom for Julian Assange’s supporters: two British judges granted Julian Assange the right to appeal against his extradition in May.
The founder of WikiLeaks was arrested by British police in April 2019, after seven years spent in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden in a rape investigation, dismissed the same year.
Since then, calls have increased for current US President Joe Biden to drop the charges against him. Australia made a formal request to do so in February.
