ROFIAT MURAINA
Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks has been released from prison in the UK and will be allowed to return to his home country of Australia after he pleads guilty to illegally disseminating national security material in the U.S., according to a surprising news report.
Court documents filed Monday by the U.S. federal government in the Northern Mariana Islands suggest the plea deal is imminent, though the New York Times notes everything still needs to be approved by a judge. Assange previously faced 170 years in prison.
According to the Associated Press, it’s due to Assange’s “opposition to traveling to the continental U.S. and the court’s proximity to Australia.”
The 52-year-old has been held in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison for the past five years, a period that follows a years-long saga that saw Assange holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy while first claiming asylum in 2012. Assange was physically dragged out of the embassy by British authorities in April 2019.
“Julian Assange is free,” the WikiLeaks X account tweeted on Monday around 8:00 p.m. ET. “He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK.”
