- According to federal court records, Assange agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified U.S. defense information.
- Assange is expected to be able to return to Australia, his country of citizenship, after serving 62 months in prison while fighting extradition on the charges, according to court records.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has fought extradition for years to avoid prosecution for leaking troves of classified information about U.S. military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, has agreed to plead guilty to violating the Espionage Act, according to federal court records.
Under the terms of his plea deal with U.S. prosecutors, Assange will not serve more time in custody than the 62 months he has already served in Britain. He is due to be released to his country of citizenship, Australia, after court proceedings conclude on Tuesday, according to federal records.
According to a letter accompanying the indictment filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean, Assange agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information relating to the national defense of the United States.
The trial in federal court in Saipan was held because Assange opposed visiting the US mainland.
Assange will plead guilty and be sentenced at the same hearing on Tuesday at 7 p.m. EDT, according to a letter from U.S. Attorney Sean Anderson. Chief U.S. District Judge Ramona Manglona has agreed to hear the arraignment.
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Assange’s wife, Stella, posted a short video that appeared to show him boarding a plane to appear in court.
“Julian is free!!!” Stella Assange posted on X(formerly known as Twitter) to express his gratitude to his supporters.
Assange, 52, attracted worldwide attention in 2010 when he uncovered the largest leak of secrets in the history of the U.S. military. WikiLeaks released more than 90,000 documents on Afghanistan and later more than 400,000 on the Iraq War, including information on civilian deaths, the hunt for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and Iranian support for militants in Iraq.
Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning served years in prison for leaking documents to WikiLeaks. Former President Barack Obama commuted her sentence after she served seven years of her 35-year sentence.
But Assange’s case proved politically and geographically difficult to prosecute: He maintained that he was a journalist and that WikiLeaks was publishing secret documents, as major US newspapers routinely do.
The Justice Department under the Obama administration did not indict him, but under former President Donald Trump, the department secured an indictment in 2019 on 17 counts of espionage and one count of computer misuse.
Assange’s critics argued that he was not a journalist because he did not write articles, interview anyone or provide enough explanatory context to explain the raw classified documents and data he released.
“WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence agency and talks like a hostile intelligence agency,” then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo said in his first public address as head of the intelligence community in April 2017. “Assange and his ilk seek personal self-aggrandizement through the destruction of Western values,” Pompeo said.
Journalism advocates deplored the plea deal.
Jameel Jaffer, director of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, said the agreement endorsed a five-year prison sentence for Assange for activities that journalists routinely engage in.
“This case will cast a huge shadow over some of the most important journalism in the country and around the world,” Jaffer said.
David Green, civil rights director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a free speech and digital privacy group, called the plea deal a “conviction against fundamental journalistic conduct.”
“This sets a dangerous precedent and everyone who values press freedom should work to ensure this never happens again,” Green said.
Assange’s lawyers argued the charges were politically motivated. He fought extradition and initially took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid charges in Sweden, but the charges were later dropped for fear Sweden would extradite him to the United States.
Assange has been jailed for years in Belmarsh prison, first because he skipped bail on charges in Sweden and then because he was considered a flight risk amid his extradition battle.
Britain’s High Court ruled in May to give the defendants another chance to fight extradition in a years-long legal battle.
The Department of Justice reached the plea agreement following uncertainty about the case following a recent court ruling.
