A US court on the Mariana Island of Saipan, a US territory in the Western Pacific, has approved the deal between Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and the American judiciary in connection with espionage allegations and sealed his release.
The BBC and the British Guardian reported this from the courtroom on Wednesday. According to the report, the 52-year-old will be released in return for a guilty plea after serving his sentence in Britain. Assange was surprisingly released from British custody on Monday.
Assange admitted to a conspiracy to illegally obtain and publish US military secrets. Although he believes that the so-called Espionage Act, the US law against espionage on the basis of which he was charged, contradicts the right to freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment, he recognizes that it can be illegal to encourage informants to provide secret information, Assange said in the courtroom.
As the Guardian and news agencies reported from the courtroom, Judge Ramona Villagomez Manglona said: “With this verdict, you seem to be able to leave this courtroom as a free man. I hope that peace will be restored.”
Assange had previously made a deal with the US justice system. After pleading guilty, he is now expected to be sentenced to five years in prison, which will be offset by his time in British custody. After this, he will probably be allowed to return to his homeland of Australia.
While the Guardian was still reporting from the courtroom on the ongoing trial against Assange, Wikileaks published a post on the X platform that was supposed to show Assange’s flight details to Australia.
According to reports, the Australian is scheduled to take off from the Northern Mariana Islands towards Canberra, Australia, at around 04:10 a.m. German time.
Assange is the protagonist of a major espionage scandal. In 2006, the Australian founded the platform Wikileaks with the mission of supporting whistleblowers and bringing hidden information to light.
From 2010 onwards, Wikileaks published secret material from US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan by whistleblower Chelsea Manning. The US subsequently accused Assange of stealing and publishing secret material, thereby endangering the lives of US informants.
For a long time, the American judiciary wanted to put Assange on trial for espionage charges. He would have faced up to 175 years in prison in the USA. Instead, he recently negotiated a deal with the US judiciary.
The justice deal is intended to spare Assange further imprisonment in the USA. The USA had previously demanded his extradition from Great Britain. Instead, the 52-year-old should now be released immediately after the court session, according to US court documents published in advance.
It is the adventurous end of a years-long odyssey with many legal battles. Assange began his sentence in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London about five years ago. Before his arrest in April 2019, he evaded the reach of law enforcement authorities for seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
They had initially targeted him because of allegations of rape in Sweden. However, these charges were later dropped due to a lack of evidence. While the USA demanded Assange’s extradition for years, human rights organisations, journalists’ associations, artists and politicians called for his immediate release. The Australian government also campaigned for the release of its citizen.
