Julian Assange to Walk Free After 14-Year Legal Battle with US Following Plea Deal

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is set to appear in a US court to finalise a plea deal that will see him released as a free man after a 14-year legal battle. Assange is expected to arrive in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific, on Wednesday. He recently departed from a British prison.

US officials had been pursuing Assange for charges related to the massive disclosure of secret files in 2010, which they argued endangered lives. Throughout his prolonged legal struggle, Assange spent the last five years imprisoned in the UK, resisting extradition to the US. He also faced separate rape and sexual assault charges in Sweden, which he denied, leading him to seek asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy for seven years. Swedish authorities eventually dropped the case in 2019 due to the passage of time, but UK authorities later arrested him for failing to surrender to the court for extradition.

In the US, Assange faced charges of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information following WikiLeaks’ 2010 revelations. These included a video of civilians being killed by a US military helicopter in Baghdad and thousands of confidential documents alleging unreported civilian deaths by US forces in Afghanistan. The disclosures garnered worldwide attention and scrutiny of US military actions.

The plea deal, to be formalized in the Northern Mariana Islands, will see Assange plead guilty to a single charge under the Espionage Act. In return, he will avoid US custody and receive credit for his time served in the UK. He is expected to return to Australia.