WASHINGTON (AP) — About a year and a half ago, Julian Assange It presented federal prosecutors in Virginia with an unfeasible request to dismiss the case. To the WikiLeaks founder.
It was a bold request given that Assange had published hundreds of thousands of secret documents and was perhaps the world’s most high-profile detainee facing a U.S. extradition request. At the time, the Justice Department was fighting a lengthy battle in British courts to have him extradited to the U.S. to stand trial.
But it was that request that led to the unthinkable moment on Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the matter. From a US court After more than a decade of self-imposed exile and imprisonment on a remote island in the western Pacific, the journey home begins.
“Mr Assange, how does it feel to be a free man?” someone shouted.
He smiled, nodded, and kept walking. He had to catch another flight back to Australia.
The plea deal unfolded against the backdrop of a slow-moving extradition process with no guarantee that the self-described free speech champion would be transferred for prosecution, nor would US authorities acknowledge the more than five years he had already served in a British prison. Ultimately, a series of proposals and counter-proposals were put forward to resolve the standoff: The Justice Department wanted a guilty plea to felony charges, but Assange refused to set foot on US soil, where he could imagine a number of catastrophic scenarios that could happen to him.
The agreement also included safeguards to guarantee Assange’s freedom in Australia in the unlikely event that a judge struck down the agreement at the last minute.
The report is based on interviews with people familiar with the negotiations and the entire case, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to describe the process, as well as a review of court records.
Assange’s release came in an unexpected location: Saipan. Northern Mariana IslandsIt marked the end of a contentious legal battle that spanned three presidential administrations and multiple continents.
This was unthinkable five years ago.
At that time, the Department of Justice made the charges public. British authorities took away a bearded and screaming Assange Assange fled the Ecuadorian embassy where he had been hiding for seven years. He was released on bail in 2012. Facing extradition to Sweden The sexual assault investigation was later dropped.
He feared arrest and extradition to the United States. Receipt and publication by WikiLeaks Hundreds of thousands of war records and diplomatic cables that U.S. prosecutors allege he conspired with Army Intelligence Analyst Chelsea Manning Obtained illegally.
At the time of his indictment, Assange was best known for WikiLeaks’ involvement in the 2016 US presidential election. Websites that reveal secrets Mass release of harmful emails Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton Stolen The attack was attributed to Russian military intelligence and officials said it was a brazen act of election interference by Moscow.
Following these announcements, Trump made this memorable statement during the campaign: “WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks.”
There was a different view within the Justice Department that Trump would soon take the reins. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in 2017 that arresting Assange was a priority for the department. control Regarding leaking of confidential information.
The crime in question was not election interference through hacking and dumping, but diplomatic cables from several years ago. The Obama administration has extensively discussed prosecuting Assange but has not pursued charges under the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the mishandling of national defense information, partly out of concern that this could be seen as an attack on journalism.
But the Trump administration’s Justice Department took a different tack. The existence of a criminal offence It was inadvertently revealed due to a paperwork error in 2018. The first narrowly defined charge, made public several months later, was a computer intrusion charge for conspiring with Manning to crack passwords that gave high-level access to classified computer networks.
Within weeks, the Justice Department unsealed 17 other charges accusing him of violating the Espionage Act by obtaining and distributing secret recordings.
Prosecutors say Assange crossed the line by indiscriminately disclosing secrets, including by soliciting hacks into computer networks to obtain classified information and by leaving the names of sources who provided information to the U.S. military unnamed. Assange’s supporters have long argued that he provided an invaluable public service by exposing military misconduct in U.S. overseas wars, much like the mission of a journalist.
The case was not legally straightforward and involved procedural complications.
As Assange was held in London’s Belmarsh prison, the Ministry of Justice tried intermittently to secure his extradition. Multi-step process The judges involved worked with Assange to seek guarantees that he would be able to defend himself by invoking the First Amendment protections he enjoys in the United States.
With Assange’s extradition prospects unclear, his team A press-friendly attorney generalMerrick Garland has tapped the lawyer as a potential catalyst for resolving the case.
In their first substantive interaction about a year and a half ago, Mr. Assange’s lawyers made a presentation to Virginia Justice Department prosecutors arguing for dismissal of the indictment. The prosecutors listened, but found the proposal unworkable, and returned a few months later with a counterproposal: Would Mr. Assange consider a guilty plea?
Assange’s team responded that they were open to considering the possibility, but that there were two lines to the solution: he would not accept any further prison time and would never set foot on American soil, given the fears he and his supporters have about what the US government might do to him.
Assange’s lawyers have floated the idea that federal court rules would allow Assange to plead guilty to the misdemeanor charges remotely without him having to travel to the United States.
When that proposal failed to cross the finish line, the two sides discussed the possibility of WikiLeaks as an organization pleading guilty to felony charges and Assange pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges, one of the people said, describing an overall effort by both sides to “get to a yes.”
Negotiations were primarily with prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia, where the case was prosecuted, but in the final months also with national security officials at the Department of Justice.
State Department officials who had been pushing for Assange’s felony plea ultimately floated the idea that he could reach a deal outside the 50 states, avoid additional prison time and be released in Britain, respecting a core part of his demands, the people said.
“The idea led to serious discussions over the next few weeks,” the official said. Only a handful of locations met the criteria, and while Guam was one of them, Saipan was chosen.
“The Department of Justice reaches resolutions in Department of Justice cases when the Department of Justice believes it can reach a resolution that is in the best interests of the United States, and that’s what we’ve done here,” Garland said at a separate news conference Thursday when asked why the Justice Department settled the case.
From the Department of Justice’s perspective, a sentence of five years or more in a maximum security British prison could be equal to or even greater than any sentence he would have received in the United States.
Meanwhile, the extradition process was tense and slow.
March, British court finds Assange He cannot be extradited unless US authorities guarantee that he will not be sentenced to death and will be able to exercise the same freedom of speech as any American citizen.
The US gave such guarantees, but Assange’s lawyers said they would only accept guarantees that he would not be sentenced to death, and that the guarantees Assange “will assert and seek to rely on the First Amendment” did not amount to the protection he deserves. The court ruled that he could appeal the extradition order. after the judges said the US had given “clearly inadequate” guarantees.
Importantly, the plea deal contained a series of conditions in case the judge did not approve it, including allowing Assange to withdraw from the deal and return to Australia, as both sides had a limited time to negotiate a new outcome. The Department of Justice also agreed to drop the charges in Saipan if the judge insisted on keeping Assange in custody.
Behind the scenes, Australian authorities have been lobbying for his release, and in an April letter the government urged the Justice Department to consider a plea deal to close the case, according to people familiar with the matter. President Joe Biden told reporters: That same month, the Trump administration said it was “considering” dropping the case. A White House official said this week that the White House had no involvement in the plea deal.
The deal with the US was reached on June 19 and was one of a number of behind-the-scenes actions that led to Assange’s release, according to the High Court in London.
On the same day, his wife, Stella Assange, stood before a camera outside Belmarsh prison to record a video expressing her hope that her husband’s ordeal would soon end.
“I definitely believe this period in our lives is over,” she said.
The video was released showing Assange on a flight to Saipan, about a week after word of the plea deal spread.
“If you’re watching this, it means he’s been released,” WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said in the same video.
On Wednesday morning, Saipan, the rural Pacific island that was the scene of fighting between Japan and the United States during World War II and more recently a scuba-diving destination with lush golf courses, became the unlikely site of a historic conclusion to a sensational incident.
After a long-haul flight from London to Bangkok, Assange arrived on Wednesday morning at the island’s grand federal courthouse, which opened four years ago and boasts towering columns and stunning waterfront views.
The white-haired Assange strutted into the courtroom in a black suit with a loosened gold tie. He looked relaxed in the courtroom, wearing glasses, reading documents and occasionally cracking jokes. When the judge asked him if he was satisfied with the terms of the plea deal, the defendant replied, “Maybe it depends on the outcome,” drawing laughter from the courtroom.
After his plea, the judge declared him a “free man” and Assange returned to Australia, where he was reunited with his wife and father, John Shipton, who told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that week that “doing cartwheels is a good expression of the joy that people feel.”
He said his son will be able to “walk around the beach in the winter, feel the sand between his toes, savor that delightful coolness, learn how to patiently play with his kids for a few hours — all the wonderful beauty of ordinary life.”
As for Assange, his future in Australia remains secure – he avoided media interviews at a press conference on Thursday, with his wife suggesting he might be looking forward to a little fun.
“Julian is going to swim in the ocean every day,” she said. “He’s going to sleep in a real bed. He’s going to eat real food. He’s going to enjoy his freedom.”
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Associated Press writers Brian Merry in London, Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington and Rod McGurk in Melbourne, Australia, contributed to this report.
