The High Court of London released WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the British prison, where he was held since 2019, and allowed him to leave the country on bail, representatives of WikiLwaks said.
"He left the high-security Belmarsh prison on the morning of June 24 after spending 1,901 days there. The High Court in London released him on bail. <...> He boarded a plane and left the UK," WikiLeaks reported.
"This is the result of a global campaign involving press freedom activists, lawmakers and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the UN. This set the stage for lengthy negotiations with the U.S. Justice Department that led to a deal," WikiLeaks said in a post on social media X.
According to CNN and The Washington Post, who have seen the court documents, Assange has made a tentative deal with the US DOJ, specifying that the deal has not yet been officially finalized. According to them, the WikiLeaks founder agreed to plead guilty to one of 18 charges in exchange for his release.
The plane with Assange on board will first land for refueling in Bangkok before heading to the U.S. island territory of the Northern Mariana Islands, where a court hearing is scheduled for June 26. Assange is expected to be sentenced to 62 months in prison, the same time he has already served in a British prison. Thus, after the verdict, the WikiLeaks founder will be able to go to Australia, where his wife and children are waiting for him.
Since 2012, Assange spent seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and the last five years (1901 days) - in prison in London. In the U.S., he faced up to 175 years in prison, he was charged, among other things, with conspiracy to disclose classified information about U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In April 2022, a court in the UK allowed his extradition to the United States, but Assange's defense has ensured that he is allowed to stay in the country while he challenges the extradition decision.
Recall that in 2006, Julian Assange founded the site Wikileaks, where he began to publish hundreds of U.S. classified documents and diplomatic correspondence. In 2010, the site published a video from a U.S. military helicopter, which shows how more than a dozen Iraqi civilians are killed in Baghdad, as well as two Reuters journalists.
