Key Points
- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is free and expected to return to Australia.
- After 5 years of imprisonment and fighting US extradition, he reportedly reached a plea deal with US Justice Dept.
According to the latest reports, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is planning to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge this week, as part of a plea deal with the US Justice Department, NBC News reports.
The deal will reportedly allow him to go free after spending 5 years in British prison and fighting US extradition.
The official court documents state that Assange did not possess a U.S. security clearance, and did not have authorization to “possess, access, or control documents, writings, or notes relating to the national defense of the United States, including United States government classified information.”
The notes also reveal that Chelsea Manning was a US Army intelligence analyst who held a top-secret US security clearance who was deployed to Forward Operating Base Hammer in Iraq.
The official documents reveal that national security information was classified as top secret, secret, or confidential, and owned by, produced by/for, and under the control of the US government.
According to the notes, information classified as such could only be lawfully accessed by persons determined by an appropriate US government official to be eligible for access to classified information who has signed an approved non-disclosure agreement, who received a security clearance, and who had the need to know the classified information.
Also, classified information could be stored in an approved facility and container.
“Conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information”
The documents also reveal that from at least 2009 through at least 2011, in an offense begun and committed outside of the jurisdiction of any particular state/district of the US, Assange knowingly and unlawfully conspired with Chelsea Manning to commit offenses against the US.
The following offenses are listed in the official documents:
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To receive and obtain documents, writings, and notes connected with the national defense, including such materials classified up to the SECRET level, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defense, and knowing and with reason to believe at the time such materials were received and obtained, they had been and would be taken, obtained, and disposed of by a person contrary to the provisions of Chapter 37 of Title 18 of the United States Code, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 793(c)
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To willfully communicate documents relating to the national defense, including documents classified up to the SECRET level, from persons having lawful possession of or access to such documents, to persons not entitled to receive them, in violation of Title 18, United States Code. Section 793(d)
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To willfully communicate documents relating to the national defense from persons in unauthorized possession of such documents to persons not entitled to receive them, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 793(e)
According to a letter from the Justice Department official Matthew McKenzie to U.S. District Judge Ramona Manglona of the Northern Mariana Islands District said that Assange would appear in court at 9 a.m. local time Wednesday (7 p.m. ET Tuesday) to plead guilty.
According to the letter, the Justice Department expects Assange will return to Australia, his country of citizenship, after the proceedings.
Assange has been held in a high-security Belmarsh Prison for five years, and he previously spent seven years in self-exile at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, NBC News reports.
Today, Assange’s wife Stella Assange shared a post on X to show her gratitude to everyone who supported him during this time.
She thanked all the people who mobilized for years to help Assange be freed.
There is no society anymore, Assange believed
Assange once said that there is no society anymore, and all we have is a transnational security elite that carves up the world using tax money. He said that to combat the elite, we not not petition, and we must take it over.
He believed that people must form their own networks of strength and mutual values which can challenge those strengths and self-interested values of warmongers in the US and others who have formed an alliance.
He said that this alliance was used “to take money from the United States, every NATO country, from Australia, and launder it through Afghanistan. Laundered through Iraq, wandered through Somalia, laundering through Yemen, laundering through Pakistan, and wash that money in people’s blood.”
Over time, Assange became a symbol of the freedom of the press and freedom of speech.
Not too long ago, the US former President Donald Trump said he would give “very serious consideration” to pardoning Julian Assange if he is re-elected US president.