Julian Assange was released and is on his way to the Mariana Islands after reaching an agreement with US justice

Julian Assange, released from a United Kingdom prison, travels this Tuesday to an American island in the Pacific where the founder of WikiLeaks will plead guilty in court within the framework of an agreement that will allow him to regain his freedom.

Pursued by US authorities for having revealed hundreds of thousands of confidential documents, the 52-year-old Australian will appear on Wednesday at 9:00 am local time (23:00 GMT on Tuesday) before a federal court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific, according to court documents released early Tuesday morning.

“Julian Assange is free” and has left the United Kingdom and the high-security prison where he has been detained since 2019, WikiLeaks stated on the X network. The organization, which released a 13-second video in which he is seen climbing a plane, reported that he took a flight at Stansted airport and was pleased that he was able to reunite with his wife, Stella Assange, and their children. The plane landed in Bangkok around 12:30 (05:30 GMT) for a technical stopover, AFP journalists confirmed. The plane will take off for Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands, around 9:00 p.m. (2:00 p.m. GMT), a Thai official said.

There he is expected to plead guilty to “conspiracy to obtain and disclose information relating to national defense,” according to the documents, which also mention his accomplice, US military officer Chelsea Manning, in this massive data leak.

Assange could be sentenced to 62 months in prison, but having served a similar period of preventive detention in London, it is expected that he will be able to return free to Australia. Stella Assange expressed “immense gratitude” to those who have mobilized “for years” to make his release a “reality.” Assange “will be a free man once the agreement is ratified by the judge” on Wednesday, his wife and mother of two of his children explained to the BBC.

The agreement involves her husband pleading guilty to one charge, which refers to “the obtaining and dissemination of information about national defense,” she said. Her mother, Christine Assange, said she was grateful that her son’s “ordeal” was coming to an end. “This shows the importance and power of secret diplomacy,” she said.

The Australian government reacted by saying that the Assange case had “gone too long” and that his detention was no longer of any interest, according to a spokesman for the prime minister.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights also welcomed his release and “the significant progress towards a definitive resolution of this case,” said spokeswoman Elizabeth Throssel. “As we have repeatedly said, this case raised a number of human rights concerns,” she added.

Stella Assange revealed to the British agency Press Association that her husband has paid $500,000 for the flight that takes him from London to Australia.

This agreement, which ends a saga of almost 14 years, which includes seven years of confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, comes two weeks before a new key hearing before the British courts.

On July 9 and 10, Assange’s appeal against his extradition to the United States was expected to be examined. Since 2019, when he was detained in a high-security prison in London, Assange has been fighting to avoid being handed over to American justice, which is pursuing him for publishing more than 700,000 confidential documents on military and diplomatic activities, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Australian, charged with 18 counts, faced up to 175 years in prison under the Espionage Act. The British government approved his extradition in June 2022. However, in May two judges granted him the right to appeal.

For her part, Chelsea Manning was sentenced in August 2013 to 35 years in prison by a military court, but was released after seven years after a commutation of her sentence by President Barack Obama.

The founder of WikiLeaks was arrested by British police in April 2019 after spending seven years locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, from where he sought to avoid extradition to Sweden in a rape investigation, which was dismissed that same year.

In recent years, calls had increased for US President Joe Biden to drop the charges against him. Australia submitted a formal request in February, which the Democratic president said he was considering. “That the prime minister (Australian, Anthony Albanese) sometimes publicly said ‘enough is enough’, and that Parliament backed him, was significant and absolutely contemplated by the United States,” Emma Shortis, a researcher in international affairs and of security from the think tank The Australia Institute.Infobae.

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