WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has reached a plea deal to end his detention in the UK, allowing him to return to his native Australia and close a legal journey of more than a decade.
According to documents released by the Northern Mariana Islands District Court on June 25, Mr. Julian Assange, 52, agreed to plead guilty to a criminal charge of conspiracy to obtain and disclose classified US defense documents. Mr. Assange has been released from Belmarsh Prison and has left the United Kingdom.
Under the agreement, Mr. Assange will appear in court on the island of Saipan in the Mariana Islands, a US Pacific territory, on the morning of June 26 and is expected to be sentenced to 62 months in prison. The five years Mr. Assange has spent in prison in the UK will count towards the sentence, so he will be able to return to Australia after the trial ends.
It is the first time the US government has sought to prosecute someone for leaking government secrets. According to Politico, the case has caused a diplomatic headache for the Biden administration, which is facing pressure from Australia, a key security ally.
Julian Assange rose to prominence after launching WikiLeaks in 2006, creating an online whistleblower platform for people to anonymously submit classified documents and videos. According to Al Jazeera, in 2010, WikiLeaks shocked the world when it published hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This was considered the most serious security leak in the history of the US military. In addition to military documents, WikiLeaks also revealed a series of sensitive diplomatic cables.
Mr Assange has been hailed by many as a hero for exposing military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan, but others have dismissed his actions as self-promotion and a lack of understanding of the harm that leaking can cause. He has also faced allegations of rape, which he has always denied.
Assange’s plea deal was not entirely unexpected, observers said. US President Joe Biden has been under increasing pressure to drop the long-running case against Assange. The Australian government made a formal request in February, and Biden publicly said he was “looking into” Australia’s request to drop the case against Assange.
An international campaign to free Assange has been going on for years, involving celebrities and press freedom advocates.
If Julian Assange is extradited to the US and prosecuted under the Espionage Act, it would have a devastating impact on journalists around the world, said Jodie Ginsberg, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. The fact that Assange is not a US citizen but an Australian citizen, but has been brought to the US and prosecuted, means that journalists anywhere who seek to publish information about human rights abuses, as WikiLeaks has done, could be pursued and prosecuted as the US has done to Assange.
The deal would bring an end to a protracted legal saga. In total, Mr Assange has spent more than a decade fighting extradition (five years in Belmarsh prison outside London and seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London).
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Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/chang-duong-moi-cua-nha-sang-lap-wikileaks-post746288.html
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