CNN Central News & Network–ITDC India Epress/ITDC News Bhopal: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been freed from the UK prison after he agreed to plead guilty with the US to violating espionage law. The deal would allow him to return home to his native Australia.
Assange, 52, has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defence documents, according to filings in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands. He will be sentenced to 62 months at a hearing on the island of Saipan on Wednesday morning. But, Assange wouldn’t be serving a jail term as he will be credited for the five years he has already served.
A US Justice Department official, in a letter to a federal judge in the district court for the Northern Mariana Islands, said Assange was being sent to Saipan because of its “proximity to the defendant’s country of citizenship”. He will leave for Australia after the sentencing hearing is done.
WikiLeaks, which announced the news, also posted a video that showed Assange boarding a plane on Monday afternoon at Stanstead Airport to depart the UK. He has been held in the high-security Belmarsh Prison since 2019. “This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations,” the statement said.
