Julian Assange Has Reached Plea Deal With U.S. Allowing Him to Go Free

Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
Jun. 24, 2024

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the US allowing him to go free.

"Julian Assange is free," Wikileaks announced Monday night on Twitter. "He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK."

Wikileaks released video on Monday showing Assange boarding his flight to freedom.


"After more than five years in a 2x3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon reunite with his wife Stella Assange, and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars," Wikileaks said. "As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom."


From NBC News, "Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free":
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange plans to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge this week as part of a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will allow him to go free after spending five years in a British prison, according to court documents.

Assange was charged by criminal information — which typically signifies a plea deal — with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, the court documents say. A letter from Justice Department official Matthew McKenzie to U.S. District Judge Ramona Manglona of the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands said that Assange would appear in court at 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday (or, 7 p.m. ET on Tuesday) to plead guilty and said that DOJ expects Assange will return to Australia, his country of citizenship, after the proceedings.

U.S. charges against Assange stem from one of the largest publications of classified information in American history, which took place during the first term of Barack Obama's presidency. Starting in late 2009, according to the government, Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning, a military intelligence analyst, to disclose tens of thousands of activity reports about the war in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of reports about the war in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of State Department cables and assessment briefs of Guantanamo Bay detainees using his WikiLeaks website.

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

Assange has been 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 reportedly fathered two children — until his asylum was withdrawn and he was forcibly carried 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 U.S. for more than a decade. In March, the High Court in London gave him permission for a full hearing on his appeal as he sought assurances that he could rely upon the First Amendment at a trial in the United States. In May, two judges on the High Court said he could have a full hearing on whether he would be discriminated against in the U.S. because he is a foreign national. A hearing on the issue of Assange's free speech rights had been scheduled for July 9-10.
This is a huge win for Biden.

I would assume he ordered this because his poll numbers are in the dump among progressives due to his support for the Gaza Genocide but it's still the right choice.


Assange has been through some 12 years of torture and even suffered a stroke while in prison.

Australia has been pushing for his release for years now and their demands appear to have been finally met.

Wikileaks was one of the first investors in Bitcoin, so it will be interesting to see if Assange comes out of this not only with his freedom but also loaded.


Though Donald Trump repeatedly said he "loves" Wikileaks while on the campaign trail in 2016, after getting elected he abandoned Assange and reportedly ordered his arrest.





Asked by Candace Owens why he didn't pardon Assange or Edward Snowden, Trump said, "There was some spying things, and there was some bad things released that really set us back and really hurt us with what they did."



Though Trump claimed he was torn about pardoning Assange and Snowden due to unspecified "spying" issues, he had no similar qualms when it came to pardoning the Israeli handler of traitor and spy Jonathan Pollard, Israeli colonel Aviem Sella, who fled the US and escaped justice after Pollard was arrested.


Pollard is considered by many to be the most damaging spy in US history and yet Trump released him from the terms of his parole so he could "make Aliyah" in Israel.


After Pollard was flown to Israel on billionaire pro-Israel GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson's private plane and given a hero's welcome by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he gave an interview encouraging American Jews to spy for Israel and embrace "dual loyalty."

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