In an agreement that would end his detention in Britain and enable him to return home to Australia, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is scheduled to enter a guilty plea this week to breaking US espionage law. This will put an end to a protracted court battle for Assange.
According to paperwork filed in the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, Assange, 52, has consented to enter a guilty plea to a single criminal offense of arranging to get and distribute sensitive US national defense documents.
At a hearing scheduled for this Wednesday at 9:00 a.m. local time on the island of Saipan (1900 EDT/2300 GMT on Tuesday), Assange is expected to be sentenced to 62 months of time already served. I expect him to head back home following that hearing.
An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by an attorney for Assange.
Large sections of diplomatic cables and hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents on Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were leaked by WikiLeaks in 2010, one of the worst security breaches in US military history.
Chelsea Manning, a former US military intelligence analyst who was also charged under the Espionage Act, was the source of the classified U.S. documents that WikiLeaks released in large quantities. Assange was indicted during the administration of former President Donald Trump.
In addition to diplomatic cables and wartime reports, the more than 700,000-document cache featured a 2007 video showing a US Apache helicopter opening fire on suspected rebels in Iraq, killing twelve people—including two Reuters news team members. 2010 saw the release of that video.
Many of Assange’s admirers throughout the world, who have long maintained that Assange, as the publisher of Wikileaks, shouldn’t be charged with crimes usually reserved for federal government officials who steal or leak material, were outraged by the allegations brought against him.
A lot of people who support press freedom have claimed that putting Assange under criminal prosecution would endanger free expression.
In addition to diplomatic cables and wartime reports, the more than 700,000-document cache featured a 2007 video showing a US Apache helicopter opening fire on suspected rebels in Iraq, killing twelve people—including two Reuters news team members. 2010 saw the release of that video.
Many of Assange’s admirers throughout the world, who have long maintained that Assange, as the publisher of Wikileaks, shouldn’t be charged with crimes usually reserved for federal government officials who steal or leak material, were outraged by the allegations brought against him.
A lot of people who support press freedom have claimed that putting Assange under criminal prosecution would endanger free expression.
The five years in prison are comparable to the term given to Reality Winner, a former intelligence contractor and Air Force veteran who was given a 63-month sentence for removing secret files and mailing them to a news organization.
Assange wed Stella while he was still in Belmarsh, and the two of them had two children while he was imprisoned in the Ecuadorian embassy.
