Video caption, Julian Assange in a US courtroom in Saipan, 9 a.m. local time on June 26 (1 a.m. CET on June 25, 2024).
Updated 56 minutes ago
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has formally pleaded guilty to the charges against him, in accordance with an agreement he reached with the United States.
Assange left the UK on June 24 after reaching a deal with US authorities that allowed him to be released on just one charge and return to his native Australia.
Assange, 52, will appear in a US court on the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands to appear before a judge under the terms of the agreement. Former Australian prime minister and current US ambassador Kevin Rudd accompanied Assange to the courtroom.
Under the agreement, he pleaded guilty in court to “conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. defense documents.”
Assange told the court he was working as a journalist when he published the leaked classified documents in 2010. He said he believed he was protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression and freedom of the press. He said he believes the espionage law he was charged with is inconsistent with the First Amendment.
Assange is expected to receive a 62-month sentence but is not expected to serve any prison time in the United States in exchange for time spent in Britain under the agreement.
In court, prosecutors made clear that if the WikiLeaks founder accepted the deal, his presumption of innocence would end and he would waive his right to appeal.
The Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific were chosen because Assange objected to traveling to the US mainland and because of their proximity to Australia. Saipan is the largest island and capital of the Northern Mariana Islands.
image captionMr Assange enters a Northern Mariana Islands courtroom
The Australian government said on Tuesday it would continue to provide consular assistance to Assange.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese previously said “the Assange case has taken too long and his continued imprisonment is in no one’s interest.”
During a court hearing on Wednesday, he told reporters in the Australian capital, Canberra, that he would speak further about Assange’s case “once the legal process has concluded”. He said they had “advocated Australia’s interests using appropriate means to support a positive outcome”.
US President Joe Biden announced in April that he was considering a request by Australia to drop the investigation into Assange.
The caption of the photo and video, which showed Assange leaving a British prison and boarding a plane, was shared by the WikiLeaks X account.
Meanwhile, WikiLeaks posted:
A video shared by WikiLeaks showed Assange, dressed in jeans and a blue shirt, being taken to Stansted Airport to board a flight.
After Assange’s agreement was reached, Julia Assange’s wife Stella Assange told the BBC in an interview: “I’m so happy. It feels surreal.”
Stella Assange had previously taken to social media to thank her husband’s supporters who had “rallied around him for so many years”.
Video description: Julian Assange boards a flight from London on June 24th.
The US has long maintained that WikiLeaks files revealing information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have put some lives at risk.
Assange, who has spent the past five years in a British prison, has been struggling to avoid extradition to the United States.
Assange and his lawyers have long maintained that the case against him is politically motivated.
He was scheduled to stand trial on 18 charges.
image captionWikiLeaks has published a photograph of Julian Assange which it says was taken as he approached Bangkok airport
US prosecutors had wanted to try the WikiLeaks founder on 18 separate charges, mostly under the Espionage Act, over the publication of classified US military records and diplomatic messages related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
WikiLeaks, which Assange founded in 2006, claims to have published more than 10 million documents in what the US government later described as “one of the largest leaks of classified information in American history.”
In 2010, the website published footage taken from a U.S. military helicopter showing the moment more than a dozen Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters journalists, were killed in Baghdad.
One of Assange’s most prominent associates, U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, was sentenced to 35 years in prison until then-President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017.
Assange also faces separate rape and sexual assault charges in Sweden, which he denies. He claimed he would be extradited to the United States if he went to Sweden, so he applied for political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy instead. He spent seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Swedish authorities dropped the case in 2019, saying too much time had passed since the original charges were laid, but he remained in custody in Britain, where he faces trial for failing to surrender to a court for extradition to Sweden.
Assange has rarely appeared in public throughout his lengthy legal battle. He has reportedly had long-standing health problems, including suffering a stroke in prison in 2021.
Who is Julian Assange and what is WikiLeaks?
Assange rose to fame as a computer programmer as a teenager.
In 1995, he was sentenced to prison in his native Australia for computer hacking, but avoided prison, promising not to do it again.
He founded the WikiLeaks website in 2006. WikiLeaks claims to have published more than 10 million classified documents, including official reports related to war, espionage and corruption.
WikiLeaks released footage taken from a US military helicopter showing the moment 18 civilians were killed in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2010.
Additionally, thousands of classified documents leaked by former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning were also published by WikiLeaks.
The documents show that U.S. forces killed hundreds of civilians during the Afghanistan war, but these were not included in official reports.
In 2019, the US Department of Justice described the breach as “one of the largest leaks of classified information in the country’s history.”
Lawyers for U.S. officials said the release of the information would put those named in Afghanistan and Iraq “at risk of serious harm, torture or even death.”
Assange, meanwhile, stressed that the files reveal serious violations by the US military and that the case against him is politically motivated.
Assange, who is accused of conspiring to hack into military databases to obtain classified information, will stand trial on 18 charges.
