Julian Assange Freed From UK Jail After Agreeing A Deal To Plead Guilty With US (Photo @jakeshieldsajj)
WikiLeaks founder and whistleblower Julian Assange, who has been fighting extradition from Britain to the United States for the alleged violation of the Espionage Law, agreed to plead guilty on June 24, according to a court document from the US department of Justice.
The deal to plead guilty in a US court will end the jail term that Assange has been serving since 2019. The deal was agreed in exchange for Julian Assange’s freedom. Assange has spent around five years in the UK prison, and the deal reportedly means the WikiLeak founder can return to his country, Australia. Assange has been detained in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London.
Read Also: Has Saudi Arabia Exited The Petro-Dollar Deal With US?: Future Of International Transactions
The deal was agreed two weeks before Assange was scheduled to appear in court in Britain to appeal against a ruling permitting his extradition to the United States.
The founder of the whistle-blowing non-profit media organization, funded by donations and media partnerships, published leaked documents that are not in public access. The 52-year-old publisher has been on the wanted list in Washington since he published thousands of secret US documents in 2010, when he was leading WikiLeaks. The material he released included a video showing civilians being killed by fire from a US helicopter in Iraq in 2007, and the victims included two Reuters journalists.
His arrest and charge by a US federal grand jury on 18 counts stemming from WikiLeaks’ publication of a trove of national security documents had caused massive protests from his supporters across the world.
With his works, Assange was considered a hero by many, while others saw him as a threat to US national security and intelligence sources for revealing military secrets. For leaking sensitive information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US held Assange on trial.
The US president was reportedly under pressure to drop the case against the WikiLeaks founder to end the long ordeal.
