Free at last: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange pleads guilty, will return to Australia within days
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange could return to Australia within days, after leaving Belmarsh prison and getting on a jet out of the United Kingdom.
Assange, 52, has been fighting extradition to the US, where he was facing espionage charges for obtaining and publishing classified information.
But on Tuesday Australia time, he agreed to plead guilty as part of a deal with US prosecutors which has ended his imprisonment in the UK, paving the way to return to Australia.
Soon after, Wikileaks announced he had left the UK and released a video of his journey to Stansted Airport outside of London.
Assangeās wife Stella was elated.
āAfter more than five years in a 2Ć3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon reunite with his wife Stella Assange, and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars,ā Wikileaks posted on X.
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āWikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions.
āAs editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles, and for the peopleās right to know.
āAs he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.
Australia has long called for the US to end its pursuit, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese directly raising the issue with President Joe Biden.
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Reacting to the news on social media site X, Nationals Senator Matt Canavan wrote, āJulian Assange will finally be a free man!ā
āIt has taken far too long, but congrats to the many that have fought for so long for justice to prevail.
āHopefully Julian can be reunited with his family soon.ā
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham welcomed the decision.
āWe have consistently said that the US and UK justice systems should be respected,ā he said in a statement.
āWe welcome the fact that Mr Assangeās decision to plead guilty will bring this long running saga to an end.ā
Under the US deal, Assange agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents, according to filings in the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.He is due to be sentenced at a hearing on the island of Saipan at 9am local time on Wednesday.
Itās unclear exactly where Assange will be by the time of that hearing.
In April at the White House, Mr Biden told reporters he was considering Australiaās request to drop the charges against Assange.
Prosecutors wanted to put Assange on trial for publishing military documents about the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, which authorities said had damaged national security and endangered the lives of US agents.
Assange was arrested in the UK in 2010 on a separate matter and took refuge in Ecuadorās embassy in London. He was taken from the embassy and sent to Belmarsh prison in 2019.
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