Julian Assange reached a plea deal with the US, allowing him to be released

WASHINGTON — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange plans to plead guilty as part of a plea deal with the U.S. Department of Justice that will allow him to be released after spending five years in a British prison, according to court documents.

Assange was charged by criminal intelligence — which typically means a plea deal — with conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defense information, court documents say.

The US charges against Assange result from one of the largest publications of confidential information in American history, which occurred during Barack Obama’s first term of presidency. Beginning in late 2009, according to the government, Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning, a military intelligence analyst, to release tens of thousands of activity reports on the war in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of reports on the war in Iraq, hundreds of of thousands of State Department Cables and assessment summaries of Guantanamo Bay detainees using its WikiLeaks website.

Court documents revealing Assange’s plea deal were filed Monday night in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean. Assange was expected to appear in that court and be sentenced to 62 months, with credit for time served in a British prison, meaning he would be free to return to Australia, where he was born.

Assange was held in the high-security Belmarsh Prison, on the outskirts of London, for five years and previously spent seven years in self-exile at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London – where he is said to have fathered two children – until his asylum was withdrawn. and he was forcibly taken out of the embassy and arrested in April 2019. A superseding indictment was returned against Assange more than five years ago, in May 2019, and a second superseding indictment was returned in June 2020.

Assange has been fighting extradition to the US for more than a decade. In March, the High Court in London gave him permission for a full hearing on his appeal, while seeking assurances that he could rely on the First Amendment in a trial in the United States. In May, two Superior Court judges said he could have a full hearing to decide whether he would be discriminated against in the US because he is a foreigner. A hearing on the issue of Assange’s free speech rights has been scheduled for July 9-10.

Assange’s WikiLeaks also published hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee that upended the 2016 presidential race. Russian intelligence officials were later indicted in connection with the hacking in 2018, in a case brought by then-special counsel Robert Mueller. At a joint press conference with then-President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin days later, Trump contradicted the prosecution and the intelligence community, saying that Putin was “extremely strong and powerful in his denial” that the Russians interfered in 2016 elections to help. he wins.

Manning was sentenced to 35 years in military prison, but her sentence was commuted by Obama in the final days of his presidency in 2017. Manning was subsequently held in contempt of court for nearly a year after refusing to answer a grand jury’s questions. . ; she was then released after a suicide attempt.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to contact the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional support.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.