CHRISTIAN BREAKING NEWS: Who is Julian Assange? Wikileaks Founder is Free | Released from London Prison, On His Way to Australia after US Plea Deal [#JulianAssange #FreedJulianAssange]
CHRISTIAN BREAKING NEWS: Who is Julian Assange? Wikileaks Founder is Free | Released from London Prison, On His Way to Australia after US Plea Deal [#JulianAssange #FreedJulianAssange]
https://x.com/wikileaks/status/1805391265489731716
https://x.com/wikileaks/status/1805390138945528183
Source: WikiLeaks X Account, @wikileaks
JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREE
Julian Assange is free. 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.
This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organizers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations. This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalized. We will provide more information as soon as possible.
After more than five years in a 2×3 mete 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 published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions. As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles, and for the people’s right to know.
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.
Julian’s freedom is our freedom.
After a years-long legal battle, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has left the UK after reaching an agreement with US authorities to plead guilty to criminal charges and be released.
Assange, 52, was charged with conspiring to obtain and distribute national defense information.
For years, the United States has claimed that the Wikileaks papers, which contained information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, threatened lives.
Assange spent the last 5 years in a British prison, where he was resisting extradition to the United States.
Assange will not be detained in the United States and will be given credit for his time in prison in the United Kingdom.
Assange will return to Australia, according to a letter from the Justice Department.
The agreement, which will see him plead guilty to one charge, is likely to be finalized in a court in the Northern Mariana Islands on Wednesday, June 26.
The remote Pacific islands, a US commonwealth, are far closer to Australia than US federal courts in Hawaii or the mainland United States.
He and his lawyers had long maintained that the lawsuit against him was politically motivated.
In April, US President Joe Biden stated he was considering Australia’s request to drop the prosecution against Assange.
The following month, the UK High Court ruled that Assange could file a second appeal against extradition to the United States, allowing him to question US assurances about how his upcoming trial would be conducted and if his right to free expression would be violated.
US prosecutors had planned to charge Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with 18 counts, most of which were under the Espionage Act, for disclosing sensitive US military records and diplomatic messages linked to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Wikileaks, which Assange launched in 2006, claims to have published over 10 million documents in what the US government later called as “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States”.
Chelsea Manning, one of Assange’s most well-known collaborators, was sentenced to 35 years in jail before being commuted by then-President Barack Obama in 2017.
In Sweden, Assange faced separate charges of rape and sexual assault, both of which he denied.
He spent 7 years hiding in Ecuador’s London embassy, thinking that the Swedish case would send him to the United States.
Swedish authorities dropped the case in 2019 after determining that too much time had passed since the original complaint, but UK authorities later arrested him.
He was tried for failing to surrender to the courts for extradition to Sweden.
Despite long-running legal challenges, Assange has rarely been seen in public and has apparently been in poor health for years, including a minor stroke in prison in 2021.
NEWS SOURCE & LINKS:
BBC
Who is Julian Assange? Wikileaks Founder is FREE AFTER US PLEA DEAL… | Christian Breaking News!