WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange released after deal with US

The WikiLeaks portal has announced on its X account that Julian Assange has left the British high-security prison where he was being held this Monday morning and has already left the United Kingdom with the aim of returning to Australia.

“Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum-security prison on the morning of June 24, after spending 1,901 days there,” WikiLeaks reported in X. One of Assange’s lawyers, Aitor Martinez, tweeted the agreement. “Assange has reached an agreement with the Department of Justice and is finally free,” Martinez said.

The portal assures that Assange, 52 years old and of Australian nationality, “was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released during the afternoon at Stansted Airport, where he boarded a plane and left the United Kingdom.”

“After more than five years in a 2×3 meter cell, isolated for 23 hours a day, he will soon be reunited with his wife Stella Assange and his children, who have only known their father from behind bars,” the portal said. X added: “Julian’s freedom is our freedom.”

WikiLeaks also published a video showing Assange, with white hair combed back, reviewing some papers and then climbing the steps of a plane.

WikiLeaks’ announcement comes after court documents revealed that Assange had struck a deal with the US Justice Department that will allow him to return to Australia and end a lengthy judicial saga over the leak of classified documents.

Assange will appear in a court in the Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean, at 9:00 am local time on Wednesday (23:00 GMT on Tuesday) to finalise the deal with the Justice Department.

A US judge had charged Assange with 18 offences for violating the Espionage Act in 2010 over one of the largest leaks of classified information in United States history, which revealed secrets from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as data about detainees at the Guantanamo base, among other matters.

Under the deal with the Justice Department, Assange will plead guilty to one count of conspiring to illegally receive and transmit classified information at a court hearing on Wednesday.

The appearance will take place at a court in the Mariana Islands because of Assange’s opposition to traveling to the continental United States and the court’s proximity to Australia, according to a Justice Department letter filed with the court.

Under the deal, which still must be approved by a judge, Assange will be sentenced to only 62 months in prison, equivalent to the time he has already served at the high-security Belmarsh prison.

Organisations defending freedom of the press have been demanding Assange’s release for years and his wife Stella is leading a campaign in his defence with the participation of celebrities and political figures.