WorthyNews: Wikileaks Says Jailed Founder Assange Left Britain After Striking Plea Deal With US

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By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

LONDON (Worthy News) – Julian Assange has been released from a British prison, announced WikiLeaks, the group he founded, which posted on social media a video of him boarding a flight that departed Britain at London’s Stansted airport on Monday evening.

The announcement that Assange, 52, was free came shortly after news broke that he was set to plead guilty this week to violating U.S. espionage law in a deal that would allow him to return home to his native Australia.

Though seen by his family and supporters as a battle for press freedom, all have not welcomed Assange’s release. The former U.S. vice president, Mike Pence, has called the apparent plea deal a “miscarriage of justice” which “dishonours” U.S. troops. In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, he said: “Julian Assange endangered the lives of our troops in a time of war and should have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The Biden administration’s plea deal with Assange is a miscarriage of justice and dishonors the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our Armed Forces and their families. There should be no plea deals to avoid prison for anyone that endangers the security of our military or the national security of the United States. Ever.”

However, while his supporters celebrated his release, it was not necessarily a clear win for the principle underlying his defense, the freedom of the press, said Julian Borger, The Guardian newspaper’s world affairs editor.

“U.S. prosecutors argued that Assange was not a proper journalist, but a hacker and an activist with his own agenda, who endangered the lives of US sources and contacts, so the Espionage Act could be applied without harming press freedom,” Borger said.

“But press and civil liberties advocates took the view that it was irrelevant how Assange was defined. The things he was accused of doing, “obtaining and disseminating classified information,” are what national security journalists do for a living.”

The revelations WikiLeaks published about the Iraq and Afghan wars in 2010, leaked to the organization by an army intelligence analyst, Chelsea Manning, brought to light “possible human rights abuses by the US military in those wars, among other things,” Borger added.

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“They were published by The Guardian and other news organizations on the grounds there was a strong public interest in those secrets being brought to light.”

Assange’s mother said she was grateful her son’s “ordeal is finally coming to an end” after the Australian citizen was released from jail in Britain to seal a US plea deal. His father described the breakthrough as “wonderful” and “energizing.”

Assange’s release ends more than a decade of freedom restrictions, which began in November 2010, when Sweden issued a European arrest warrant for Assange for allegations of sexual assault, which he denied.

After losing his appeal against the warrant, he breached bail and took refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London in June 2012. Ecuador granted him asylum in August 2012 on the grounds of political persecution and fears he might be extradited to the United States.

He stood for the Australian Senate in 2013 and launched the WikiLeaks Party but failed to win a seat.

Swedish prosecutors dropped the investigation in 2019, and on April 11, 2019, Assange’s asylum was withdrawn following a series of disputes with Ecuadorian authorities.

The police were invited into the embassy, and he was detained. He was found guilty of breaching the Bail Act and sentenced to 50 weeks in prison.

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While behind bars, the U.S. government unsealed several indictments ranging from “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion” to violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and alleging he had conspired with hackers.

Fearing that he may escape, British authorities kept Assange incarcerated in HM Prison Belmarsh in London from April 2019, as the United States government’s extradition effort was contested in the British courts.

On 24 June 2024, he agreed to a plea deal, admitting his guilt to an espionage charge of “conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defense documents” to avoid further incarceration.

Under the terms of the deal, the US Justice Department prosecutors would seek a sentence that allowed for his immediate release late Monday, ending an ordeal that friends say impacted his physical and mental health.

It remains unclear what the future will be of WikiLeaks, the nonprofit media group that friends and foes agree revealed the inner workings of diplomacy and power brokers rarely seen.

In 2023, Assange said that WikiLeaks could no longer publish due to his imprisonment and the effect that “US government surveillance” and WikiLeaks’ funding restrictions had on potential whistleblowers.

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