WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been released from prison in the United Kingdom and is returning to Australia which ends years long saga between US government and free speech advocates.
Assange, 52, will plead guilty to conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defense documents, according to filings in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands. This agreement concludes a long legal battle during which Assange spent over five years in a high-security prison in the UK and seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to the U.S., where he faced 18 criminal charges.
Assange was released from Belmarsh prison on Monday and flown out of the UK. He will appear in court in Saipan, a U.S. Pacific territory, at 9 am on Wednesday (23:00 GMT on Tuesday), where he will be sentenced to 62 months for time already served. “Julian Assange is free,” WikiLeaks announced on X.
Who is Julian Assange?
Julian Paul Assange (born July 3, 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006.
Assange grew up in various towns in Australia before settling in Melbourne in his mid-teens. He became involved in the hacker community and was convicted of hacking in 1996. He launched WikiLeaks in 2006 as an online platform for whistleblowers to anonymously submit classified materials such as documents and videos.
He gained international attention in 2010 after WikiLeaks published a series of leaks from U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, including footage of a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad, U.S. military logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and U.S. diplomatic cables. Assange has received numerous awards for his work in publishing and journalism.
Assange was WikiLeaks’ editor when it published documents from Bank Julius Baer, footage of the 2008 Tibetan unrest, and a report on political killings in Kenya with The Sunday Times.
In November 2010, Sweden issued a European arrest warrant for Assange on allegations of sexual assault. After losing his appeal, he sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in June 2012 and was granted asylum in August 2012 due to fears of political persecution and potential extradition to the U.S. Assange unsuccessfully ran for the Australian Senate in 2013, and the Swedish investigation was dropped in 2019.
Assange’s asylum was withdrawn on April 11, 2019, leading to his arrest by British police. He was convicted of breaching the Bail Act and sentenced to 50 weeks in prison. The U.S. government subsequently unsealed indictments against him for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and violations of the Espionage Act of 1917, alleging collaboration with hackers. Assange was held in HM Prison Belmarsh in London from April 2019 until June 2024, while the U.S. extradition efforts were contested in British courts.
