Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has reportedly left the UK following a protracted court battle in which he agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges in exchange for his release from prison.
The 52-year-old Assange was accused of plotting to acquire and reveal material related to national defence.
Assange, 52, has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of 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.
WikiLeaks reported early Tuesday morning British time that "Julian Assange is free" and had left the country. He is scheduled to appear Wednesday morning local time in the US territory.
The worst security breaches in American military history occurred in 2010 when hundreds of thousands of secret papers on Washington's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were made public by WikiLeaks, along with vast amounts of diplomatic cables.
During the administration of former President Donald Trump, Assange was charged with a crime related to the widespread disclosure of classified U.S. information by WikiLeaks. The documents were supplied by Chelsea Manning, a former military intelligence analyst who was also charged with violating the Espionage Act.
A 2007 video showing a U.S. Apache helicopter firing at suspected rebels in Iraq, killing twelve people—including two Reuters news team members—was among the more than 700,000 papers in the cache. Other records included combat reports and diplomatic cables. The video was made available in 2010.
Assange's numerous international followers were outraged by the allegations brought against him. They have long maintained that Assange, as the publisher of Wikileaks, shouldn't be subject to the same legal action as federal government workers who steal or leak material.
Many press freedom advocates have argued that criminally charging Assange represents a threat to free speech.
An Australian government spokesperson said, "Prime Minister (Anthony) Albanese has been clear - Mr Assange's case has dragged on for too long and there is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration."
After Swedish officials stated they intended to interview Assange about sex-crime accusations that were later dropped, Assange was initially detained in Britain in 2010 on a European arrest order. In order to escape being extradited to Sweden, he fled to the Ecuadorian embassy, where he stayed for seven years.
He was dragged out of the embassy in 2019 and jailed for skipping bail. Since then, he has spent nearly five years fighting his extradition to the United States from London's Belmarsh high security jail.
These five years behind bars are comparable to the 63-month term handed down to Reality Winner, an Air Force veteran and former intelligence contractor, for removing sensitive information and mailing them to a news organisation.
While in Belmarsh, Assange married his partner Stella with whom he had two children while he was holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy.
(With inputs from Reuters)
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