BREAKING: WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange To Be Freed After Reaching Stunning Plea Deal
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is set to plead guilty to charges as part of a plea agreement with the U.S. Justice Department. This deal will secure his release after he spent five years behind bars in Britain.
Assange faced charges of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information which often indicate that a plea agreement has been reached. Court documents filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands disclosed a plea deal involving Assange.
The documents indicated that Assange, who has spent time in a British prison, was slated to appear in this court and receive a 62-month sentence, with the time already served to be credited towards it. The arrangement would pave the way for his return to Australia, according to NBC News.
Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, and founder of WikiLeaks, an organization that became infamous for its publication of classified media provided by whistleblowers. His foray into the world of hacking began in his teenage years under the pseudonym “Mendax.”
BREAKING: WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department allowing him to go free
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) June 24, 2024
He demonstrated a profound ability to infiltrate networks, but it was always driven by curiosity rather than malicious intent. In 1991, he was charged with hacking activities; he pleaded guilty to 24 charges in 1996 and was fined, but avoided a prison sentence due to the non-destructive nature of his activities.
The founding of WikiLeaks in 2006 marked a turning point in Assange’s career. The platform was designed to allow whistleblowers to anonymously release classified or sensitive information. WikiLeaks burst into global consciousness in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.
These included the “Collateral Murder” video, which showed U.S. soldiers fatally shooting 18 people from a helicopter in Iraq, along with the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs, and U.S. diplomatic cables. The publications sparked international debates about the legality, morality, and impact of exposing such materials.
Assange’s activities with WikiLeaks made him a polarizing figure. Legal troubles soon followed. In 2010, he was arrested in the UK on a European Arrest Warrant related to sexual assault allegations in Sweden, which he denied and were eventually dropped in 2019.
He knows everything 😎 pic.twitter.com/Mq8VLdooSx
— One Bad Dude (@OneBadDude_) June 24, 2024
While fighting extradition, Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012, claiming political asylum. He remained there until 2019, when his asylum was revoked, and he was arrested by British police. Assange had been fighting extradition to the United States, where he faced charges under the Espionage Act for his role in the publication of classified documents.
