WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was released from Belmarsh Prison in London on Monday morning. In the afternoon, he boarded a plane from Stansted Airport to his native Australia, according to the WikiLeaks account
Earlier, from Monday to Tuesday night, it became known, based on American court documents, that Assange, 52 years old, had concluded a deal with the American court. In exchange for his release, he pleaded guilty to violating US espionage laws. Under the deal, he will be sentenced to 62 months in prison, but he will no longer have to serve that prison sentence.
WikiLeaks notes that the whistleblower has been detained in a British prison since April 2019, a total of 1,901 days. The High Court in London released the amount on bail. Before his imprisonment in Belmarsh, he spent seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
The Australian is scheduled to appear in court in the Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific, on Wednesday at 9am (local time). The agreement will be ratified there, and Assange is expected to travel to Australia after that. “This is the result of a global campaign by activists, press freedom advocates, politicians and leaders from all sides of the political spectrum, including the United Nations,” the organization wrote of Assange’s release. “Julian's freedom is our freedom.”
Assange will soon see his wife, Stella, and their two children, born in 2017 and 2019. WikiLeaks notes that they “only know their father from behind bars.” In the United States, Assange was tried for publishing secret government documents. He faces up to 175 years in prison for publishing secret documents about US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the US, the Australian endangered the lives of American informants with his publications, the largest defense leak in the country's history.
Before news of his release became known, the Australian government had already announced that the case against Assange had been protracted. A government spokesman said: “There is nothing to be gained from further detention.”
