A man jailed for allegedly revealing too much was released from behind bars without a whisper from his team or authorities.
The only video of Julian Assange on British soil after his release from the high-security Belmarsh prison, he was filmed with a mobile phone by his closest collaborators.
It shows him driving down the motorway towards Stansted Airport, before boarding a private charter plane.
Assange was already on his way before news of his apparent plea deal became public through court documents filed in the United States.
He is believed to be headed, curiously, for the remote Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean, closer to Japan and his native Australia than to the mainland United States.
There he will plead guilty before a federal judge to violating the Espionage Act.
On Wednesday Northern Mariana Islands time, Assange will likely be a free man, avoiding the extradition to the United States he feared.
The final twist of a long legal drama
Perhaps it is the final twist in a legal drama that has lasted more than a decade.
A plea deal like this in US espionage cases is not unusual, as it gives the defendant the opportunity to avoid a longer sentence and represents, in some respects, a victory for both sides.
For Assange, it means freedom after seven years of self-exile in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, followed by five years in Belmarsh.
For the United States, the country is now free of this complicated legal saga and, at least on paper, has an official admission of guilt from Assange.
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The United States can point to this as evidence that there is no First Amendment, Freedom of the Press, or defense for what he did.
The plea deal ends a transatlantic tug-of-war over one of the world’s most famous prisoners, but the debate over whether he should have been behind bars in the first place will continue.
While his critics call him a reckless criminal, Assange’s supporters, who are many, call him a fearless seeker of truth.
His friend, Craig Murray, a former British diplomat, claims the plea deal was the result of coercion.
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“The danger was spending the rest of his life in a maximum security prison in the United States,” Murray told Sky News.
“So this is coercion. Julian Assange did nothing wrong. Julian Assange exposed the war crimes of the United States military and that is something we should all remember.”
Now that he is free, it is unlikely that this will be the last we hear from Julian Assange.
This story originally appeared on News.sky.com read the full story
