The story so far: In a dramatic conclusion to an extradition saga that lasted more than a decade, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on June 26 pleaded guilty to violating espionage law, allowing him to walk free to return to his home in Australia, as part of a landmark deal with U.S. Justice Department.

Mr. Assange, who founded the whistleblower media group WikiLeaks in 2006, released classified documents relating to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010, among several others. He was sentenced to the five years he had already served in a British prison while fighting to avoid extradition to the U.S. Mr. Assange had left the British prison on June 24 to appear before a U.S. federal court in the Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific.

Julian Assange and the cases against him

Born in 1971 in Townsville, Australia, Julian Assange studied mathematics and physics at the University of Melbourne but dropped out before completing his degree. In 2006, he launched WikiLeaks, which publishes large datasets of “censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption.”

Also Read | How did WikiLeaks get Julian Assange in so much trouble?

The website first grabbed global attention in 2010 when it published a cache of around half a million sensitive military files on Iraq and Afghanistan, including a classified video from 2007 that showed an Apache helicopter firing indiscriminately, killing a dozen people, including two Reuters correspondents in Baghdad. Around 250,000 secret diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies were also released.

The leaks caused ripples across the globe, with the U.S. government launching an inquiry into one of the largest security breaches in its military history.

In September 2010, Mr. Assange fled to Britain after an investigation was launched into alleged sex crimes by him, based on the accusations of two Swedish WikiLeaks volunteers. The British police arrested him two months later. The WikiLeaks founder, however, denied the charges and claimed that the case was a pretext to extradite him to the U.S. He subsequently filed multiple pleas against extradition to Sweden but relief evaded him. In June 2012, shortly after the UK Supreme Court rejected his final challenge against extradition to Sweden, Mr. Assange went to the Ecuadorean embassy in London seeking asylum. While the Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation in 2017, the British police maintained that Mr. Assange would be arrested. He remained in the embassy for seven years.

While Julian Assange’s lawyers argued that he had exposed U.S. wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. government said his actions were beyond those of a journalist gathering information and had put lives at risk.

Meanwhile, former intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who had accessed the U.S. Department of Defense database and uploaded classified files onto a WikiLeaks dropbox, spent seven years in prison before then President Barack Obama commuted the remainder of her 35-year sentence. The U.S. administration said it won’t pursue criminal charges against Mr. Assange or WikiLeaks. 

The extradition saga

In 2016, ahead of the U.S. presidential election, the spotlight was back on the website after it released thousands of emails belonging to John Podesta, the aide of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. As per prosecutors, Russian intelligence operatives had stolen the emails and used the anti-secrecy website to improve Donald Trump’s chances of victory.

The new Trump administration, which held a different view, charged the WikiLeaks founder with collaboration in a conspiracy. A U.S. court later indicted Mr. Assange on 17 additional charges related to the violation of the Espionage Act of 1917.

As pressure mounted, the Ecuadorian government revoked his asylum in 2019 and Mr. Assange was arrested and jailed for breaching bail conditions in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison.

The U.K. approved Mr. Assange’s extradition in 2022. However, he won the right to appeal the verdict in a final legal bid to stop his extradition. His legal team claimed the case was politically motivated and an assault on the freedom of speech. The U.S. President’s remarks that his administration was “considering” a request from Australia to drop its prosecution was a ray of hope for Mr. Assange’s family.

On June 26, Julian Assange walked out of the Belmarsh Prison where he spent the last five years to appear before a federal court in the Northern Mariana Islands— to secure his freedom as part of a plea deal with the U.S. “Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London…” tweeted WikiLeaks.

What’s the deal? 

Under the deal, Julian Assange admitted guilt to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified documents during the hearing that took place on June 26 in a district court in Saipan.

Mr. Assange said in court that though he believed the Espionage Act contradicted the First Amendment, he accepted the consequences of soliciting classified information from sources for publication, AP reported.

The judge approved his plea, sentenced him to the five years he had already spent in the U.K. fighting extradition, pronouncing him a “free man.”

Julian Assange landed in the Australian capital Canberra on June 26. His wife Stella Assange and their two children have been in Australia awaiting his release.

While it is not yet clear what Mr. Assange’s plans are, his lawyer Barry Pollack has said, “WikiLeaks’ work will continue and Mr. Assange, I have no doubt, will be a continuing force for freedom of speech and transparency in government.”

Demonstrators hold placards after Stella Assange, wife of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, released a statement outside the Royal Courts of Justice, in London on March 26, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was granted a temporary reprieve from being extradited to the U.S. from the U.K., after the British High Court ruled on Tuesday that he would not be extradited immediately and gave the U.S. three weeks to provide assurances regarding the trial of Mr. Assange.

The U.S. wants to try the 52-year-old Australian on 18 counts, for obtaining and publishing sensitive U.S. military and diplomatic information. Seventeen of the charges against him are under the U.S.’s Espionage Act. Mr. Assange has been imprisoned in London since 2019 after spending approximately seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had sought refuge from extradition to Sweden on rape charges. The investigation was dropped by prosecutors in 2019 due to lack of sufficiently strong evidence.

Mr. Assange has sought an appeal of the U.K. government’s 2022 decision to extradite him on nine separate grounds. The High Court, which permits under-trials to appeal if it believes there are grounds to do so, said it was of the view that three of these grounds had a “real prospect of success” .

The court gave Washington three weeks to assure it that Mr. Assange would not face the death penalty (which is technically applicable in cases of treason under U.S. law). It also sought assurances that Mr. Assange, an Australian, would be able to rely on the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment (freedom of speech) rights during his trial and that the trial would not be prejudiced because he is not an American Citizen.

“It has given the Government of the United States of America and the Secretary of State an opportunity to offer assurances that would address those grounds of appeal,” the High Court said on Tuesday. If Washington’s response was not satisfactory, the court would allow Mr. Assange to appeal. A decision is expected on May 20, which means Mr. Assange will not be extradited at least until then.

Addressing the media outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Mr. Assange’s wife Stella Assange called the ruling “astounding”. She said that though the court had recognised the risks Mr. Assange was exposed to, it had sought a “political intervention” from the United States, asking Washington to declare, “It’s all okay. ”

The Biden administration should not issue assurances, Ms. Assange said, asking it instead to drop this “shameful case”. She called on people to support U.S. House of Representatives Resolution 934, which calls for dropping the case against her husband.

In its 2019 indictment, the U.S. had said that starting in 2009, Mr. Assange aided, abetted and caused a (then) intelligence officer, Chelsea Manning, to give him classified documents. The subsequent publication of these documents related to U.S. military activity in Afghanistan and Iraq put U.S. national security at risk and U.S. agents at “risk of serious physical harm” according to the U.S. government.

London:

Two UK judges on Tuesday delayed a decision on whether to grant WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a last-ditch appeal against extradition to the United States, giving Washington three weeks to provide “assurances” in the case.

The US wants the 52-year-old Australian citizen to stand trial there for WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of secret military and diplomatic files in 2010 relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Attempting to halt the process, he had suffered a string of court losses in the long-running legal saga, which his supporters see as a battle for media freedom.

But following two days of evidence last month, the judges in London said Assange had “a real prospect of success” on three of his nine grounds of appeal.

Victoria Sharp and Jeremy Johnson gave Washington three weeks to provide fresh assurances over concerns he will be prejudiced at trial because he is not an American citizen and that he could face the death penalty if convicted.

“Before making a final decision on the application for leave to appeal, we will give the respondent an opportunity to give assurances,” the pair wrote in their 66-page ruling.

“If assurances are not given then we will grant leave to appeal without a further hearing.

“If assurances are given then we will give the parties an opportunity to make further submissions before we make a final decision.”

‘Bad faith’ 

Assange, who has been held at a high-security London prison on remand since 2019, was not in court for the latest ruling, which was released online and not in a hearing.

He was absent from court on both days in February and did not follow the proceedings via video due to illness, his lawyer said at the time.

If he eventually loses the appeal bid, the Wikileaks’ founder will have exhausted all UK appeals and will be set to enter the extradition process.

However, his team has previously indicated they will ask the European courts to intervene and that they would be given 14 days to do so.

The US indicted Assange multiple times between 2018 and 2020 but US President Joe Biden has faced persistent domestic and international pressure to drop the case filed under his predecessor Donald Trump.

Major media organisations, press freedom advocates and the Australian parliament have all denounced the prosecution under the 1917 Espionage Act, which has never been used over the publishing of classified information.

Washington alleges that Assange and others at WikiLeaks recruited and agreed with hackers to conduct “one of the largest compromises of classified information” in US history.

During last month’s hearing, lawyers for the US government defended the case on various legal grounds.

Legal saga 

Lawyers for Assange submitted that the charges were “political” and that he was being prosecuted “for engaging in ordinary journalistic practice of obtaining and publishing classified information”.

They also argued that the decades-long prison sentence he faces if convicted was “disproportionate”, and Washington had acted in “bad faith”, contravening its extradition treaty with Britain.

Before going to prison, Assange spent seven years holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced accusations of sexual assault which were later dropped.

The High Court had blocked his extradition, but then reversed the decision on appeal in 2021 after the US vowed not to imprison him in its most extreme prison, “ADX Florence”.

It also pledged not to subject him to the harsh regime known as “Special Administrative Measures”, and to allow him to eventually serve out his sentence in Australia.

In March 2022, the UK Supreme Court refused permission to appeal, arguing Assange failed to “raise an arguable point of law”.

Months later, ex-interior minister Priti Patel formally signed off on his extradition.

Assange was seeking permission to review that decision and the 2021 appeal ruling.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)