WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has arrived at a federal courthouse in Saipan ahead of an expected guilty plea in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will set him free to return home to Australia.

The plane carrying the eccentric computer expert and internet publisher touched down more than two hours before the scheduled start of a plea hearing, in which he is set to admit to a felony for publishing U.S. military secrets under a deal that spares him prison time in America after years spent jailed in the United Kingdom while fighting extradition to America.

He arrived in a white vehicle, wearing a dark suit with a tie loosened at the collar, and was briskly escorted into the courthouse while ignoring questions from reporters.

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The hearing, taking place in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific, is the stunning culmination of the U.S. government’s yearslong pursuit of the publisher who has been painted both as a hero and a reckless criminal for exposing hundreds of thousands of sensitive military documents.

The U.S. Justice Department agreed to hold the hearing on the remote island because Assange opposed coming to the continental U.S. and because it’s near Australia, where he will return after he enters his plea.

The deal — disclosed Monday night in court papers — represents the final chapter in a more than decade-long legal odyssey over the fate of Assange, whose hugely popular secret-sharing website made him a cause célèbre among press freedom advocates who said he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing. U.S. prosecutors have said his actions recklessly put the country’s national security at risk.

Though the deal with prosecutors requires Assange to admit guilt to a single felony count, it also allows him to avoid spending any time in an American prison. He will get credit for the five years he has already spent in a high-security British prison while fighting extradition to the U.S. to face charges. Before being locked up in London, Assange spent years hiding out in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault, which he has denied.

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The abrupt conclusion enables both sides to claim a degree of success, with the Justice Department able to resolve without trial a case that raised thorny legal issues and that might never have reached a jury at all given the plodding pace of the extradition process.

Last month, Assange won the right to appeal an extradition order after his lawyers argued that the U.S. government provided “blatantly inadequate” assurances that he would have the same free speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from Britain.

His wife, Stella Assange, told the BBC from Australia that it had been “touch and go” over 72 hours whether the deal would go ahead but she felt “elated” at the news. A lawyer who married the WikiLeaks founder in prison in 2022, she said details of the agreement would be made public once the judge had signed off on it.

“He will be a free man once it is signed off by a judge,” she said, adding that she still didn’t think it was real.

Assange on Monday left the London prison, where he has spent the last five years, after being granted bail during a secret hearing last week. He boarded a plane that landed hours later in Bangkok to refuel before taking off again toward Saipan. A video posted by WikiLeaks on X, showed Assange staring intently out the window at the blue sky as the plane headed toward the island.

“Imagine. From over 5 years in a small cell in a maximum security prison. Nearly 14 years detained in the U.K. To this,” WikiLeaks wrote. The top Australian diplomat in the United Kingdom accompanied Assange on the flight.

The guilty plea resolves a criminal case brought by Republican President Donald Trump’s administration over the receipt and publication of war logs and diplomatic cables that detailed U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prosecutors alleged that Assange conspired with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain the records and published them without regard to American national security, including by releasing the names of human sources who provided information to U.S. forces.

Former Vice President Mike Pence called the new arrangement a “miscarriage of justice,” writing on X that Assange “endangered the lives of our troops in a time of war and should have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

But Assange’s activities drew an outpouring of support from press freedom advocates, who heralded his role in bringing to light military conduct that might otherwise have been concealed from view. Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.

Australia for years has been calling on the U.S. government to drop the case against Assange, arguing there’s a disconnect between the treatment of Assange and Manning. Then-U.S. President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her release in 2017.

“Regardless of the views that people have about Mr. Assange’s activities, the case has dragged on for too long,” said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. “There’s nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia.”

Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 and was granted political asylum after courts in England ruled he should be extradited to Sweden as part of a rape investigation in the Scandinavian country. He was arrested by British police after Ecuador’s government withdrew his asylum status in 2019 and then jailed for skipping bail when he first took shelter inside the embassy.

Although Sweden eventually dropped its sex crimes investigation because so much time had elapsed, Assange had remained in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison during the extradition fight with the U.S.

Assange made headlines again in 2016 after his website published Democratic emails that prosecutors say were stolen by Russian intelligence operatives. He was never charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, but the inquiry laid bare in stark detail the role that the hacking operation played in interfering in that year’s election on behalf of Trump.

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Tucker reported from Fort Pierce, Florida, and Durkin Richer from Washington. Associated Press writers Colleen Long in Washington, Napat Kongsawad and David Rising in Bangkok, Jill Lawless and Brian Melley in London and Rod McGuirk in Melbourne, Australia, contributed to this report.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to plead guilty to a felony charge in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department. File photo
| Photo Credit: AP

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to a felony charge in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will free him from prison and resolve a long-running legal saga that spanned multiple continents and centered on the publication of a trove of classified documents, according to court papers filed late Monday.

Assange is scheduled to appear in the federal court in the Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific, to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defence information, the Justice Department said in a letter filed in court.

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The guilty plea, which must be approved by a judge, brings an abrupt conclusion to a criminal case of international intrigue and to the U.S. government’s years-long pursuit of a publisher whose hugely popular secret-sharing website made him a cause célèbre among many press freedom advocates who said he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing. Investigators, by contrast, have repeatedly asserted that his actions broke laws meant to protect sensitive information and put the country’s national security at risk.

He is expected to return to Australia after his plea and sentencing, which is scheduled for Wednesday morning, local time in Saipan, the largest island in the Mariana Islands. The hearing is taking place there because of Assange’s opposition to traveling to the continental U.S. and the court’s proximity to Australia.

The deal ensures that Assange will admit guilt while also sparing him from any additional prison time. He had spent years hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy in London after Swedish authorities sought his arrest on rape allegations before being locked up in the United Kingdom.

Prosecutors have agreed to a sentence of the five years Assange has already spent in a high-security British prison while fighting to avoid extradition to the U.S. to face charges, a process that has played out in a series of hearings in London. Last month, he won the right to appeal an extradition order after his lawyers argued that the U.S. government provided “blatantly inadequate” assurances that he would have the same free speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from Britain.

He is expected to return to Australia after his plea and sentencing, which is scheduled for Wednesday morning, local time in Saipan, the largest island in the Mariana Islands. The hearing is taking place there because of Assange’s opposition to traveling to the continental U.S. and the court’s proximity to Australia.

Assange has been heralded by many around the world as a hero who brought to light military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.

But his reputation was also tarnished by rape allegations, which he has denied.

The Justice Department’s indictment unsealed in 2019 accused Assange of encouraging and helping U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks published in 2010. Prosecutors had accused Assange of damaging national security by publishing documents that harmed the U.S. and its allies and aided its adversaries.

The case was lambasted by press advocates and Assange supporters. Federal prosecutors defended it as targeting conduct that went way beyond that of a journalist gathering information, amounting to an attempt to solicit, steal and indiscriminately publish classified government documents. It was brought even though the Obama administration Justice Department had passed on prosecuting him years earlier.

The plea agreement comes months after President Joe Biden said he was considering a request from Australia to drop the U.S. push to prosecute Assange.

Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted of violating the Espionage Act and other offenses for leaking classified government and military documents to WikiLeaks. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017, allowing her release after about seven behind bars.

Assange made headlines in 2016 after his website published Democratic emails that prosecutors say were stolen by Russian intelligence operatives. He was never charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, but the inquiry laid bare in stark detail the role that the hacking operation played in interfering in that year’s election on behalf of then-Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Justice Department officials mulled charges for Assange following the documents’ 2010 publication, but were unsure a case would hold up in court and were concerned it could be hard to justify prosecuting him for acts similar to those of a conventional journalist.

The posture changed in the Trump administration, however, with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017 calling Assange’s arrest a priority.

Assange’s family and supporters have said his physical and mental health have suffered during more than a decade of legal battles, which includes seven years spent inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 and was granted political asylum after courts in England ruled he should be extradited to Sweden as part of a rape investigation in the Scandinavian country. He was arrested by British police after Ecuador’s government withdrew his asylum status in 2019 and then jailed for skipping bail when he first took shelter inside the embassy.

Although Sweden eventually dropped its sex crimes investigation because so much time had elapsed, Assange has remained in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison during the extradition battle with the U.S.

The story so far: On February 20, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange initiated what is purportedly his final legal effort to avoid extradition to the United States, with a London court taking up his case to assess whether to grant him an appeal to challenge the extradition order signed by the British government in June 2022. Mr. Assange was notably absent from the court proceedings due to illness, as conveyed by his legal representatives, who asserted that the WikiLeaks founder was being “prosecuted for engaging in the ordinary journalistic practice of obtaining and publishing classified information.”

The 52-year-old has been entangled in an extradition saga for over a decade, spending seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and the last five years in a London prison. Since his 2010 arrest by the British police, he has resisted extradition to the U.S., where he faces 18 criminal charges for his role in obtaining and disclosing classified documents related to military and national defence and violating the Espionage Act. His lawyers say he could be sentenced to up to 175 years if convicted of spying, a claim disputed by the U.S.

Mr. Assange’s legal team contends that he won’t receive a fair trial in the U.S., asserting the case is politically motivated and that he will face a “flagrant denial of justice” if the U.K. facilitates his extradition. His wife, Stella, has underscored the threat to his life, drawing parallels with the recent death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in prison. “His health is declining, mentally and physically. His life is at risk every day he remains in prison, and extradition would result in his death,” she recently stated.

Australia, Assange’s home country, has also intensified pressure on the U.S. and the U.K. for an “amicable end to the prosecution” so that he can return to his family. “Regardless of where people stand, this thing cannot just go on and on and on indefinitely,” Australian PM Anthony Albanese said after the Australian Parliament passed a motion calling for Mr. Assange’s return.

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What has Julian Assange done and why is he wanted?

Julian Assange first grabbed international attention in 2010 after he caused a storm in the U.S. with one of the biggest intelligence leaks in history. His website, WikiLeaks, published a huge cache of around half a million sensitive military files on the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including a classified video from 2007 that showed an Apache helicopter firing indiscriminately, killing civilians and two Reuters war correspondents in Baghdad.

The leak was facilitated by ex-intelligence analyst Bradley Manning (now known as Chelsea) who accessed the U.S. Department of Defense database and uploaded the classified military files onto a WikiLeaks dropbox. The files exposing human rights violations in Iraq and Afghanistan by the U.S. forces were published by several international news organisations.

After the ‘War Logs’ shook the world, WikiLeaks uploaded nearly 2.5 lakh cables from the U.S. embassies, without any redactions. An Italian Minister termed the leak as the “9-11 of diplomacy”. The leak not only caused great embarrassment to Washington, which described the unauthorised release of information threat to national security, but WikiLeaks’ move was condemned by its media partners who acknowledged that the release of unredacted cables could put sources at risk.

In 2016, ahead of the presidential elections, the whistleblowing website published emails of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s aide John Podesta. The leaked communication hurt Ms. Clinton’s election campaign. Activists dubbed the leak as an intervention to “harm” her chances and claimed that WikiLeaks had obtained the information from Russian intelligence agency hackers. Later, it came to light that WikiLeaks had also sought to feed information to the Trump campaign to enhance the impact of the Clinton files. Mr. Assange, however, claimed that the group’s messages were part of its promotional efforts.

How has the extradition saga unfolded over the years?

In September 2010, Mr. Assange fled Sweden for Britain after an investigation was ordered into allegations of sex crimes against him made by two WikiLeaks volunteers. The U.K. police arrested him on a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) in December that year. The WikiLeaks founder was granted bail as he denied charges, maintaining that the sex crimes case was a pretext to hand him over to the U.S. In subsequent months, Mr. Assange filed multiple pleas against extradition to Sweden to face rape charges. His case went up to the U.K. Supreme Court, but relief evaded him. 

After his final challenge to appeal the extradition was rejected, Mr. Assange jumped bail and took refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in June 2012. He was offered political asylum a few months later. With British authorities ready to arrest him as soon as he left the premises, he remained there for seven years even though Swedish prosecutors subsequently dropped all investigations. 

In the meantime, in the United States, Ms. Manning was convicted of espionage for disclosing unauthorised files to WikiLeaks though her sentence was later commuted by the Obama administration, and maintained that it would not pursue criminal charges against WikiLeaks or Mr. Assange. 

The new Trump administration, however, held a different view.

Soon after Donald Trump took oath in 2017, Mr. Assange was charged with collaborating in a conspiracy with Ms. Manning to crack a password on a Defence Department network to publish classified documents and communications on WikiLeaks in a sealed indictment. The charges were unsealed in 2019. Mr. Assange was indicted on 17 additional charges related to the violation of the Espionage Act of 1917 by a U.S. court, taking the total to 18.

The Ecuadorian government, meanwhile, revoked his asylum status in April 2019 as pressure mounted. Dramatic scenes played outside the embassy as police dragged out Mr. Assange and arrested him for jumping bail. The following month, he was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for breaching his bail conditions.

With Mr. Assange in jail, the U.S. formally asked Britain to extradite him to put him on trial for 18 charges that included conspiracy to hack into Pentagon computers and releasing secret files, thereby violating espionage laws. 

What is happening in the latest trial? 

Mr. Assange completed his jail term in September 2019, but the U.K. trial and extradition saga has been going on for nearly five years. After much back and forth on extradition appeals, Britain’s then Home Secretary Priti Patel approved Mr. Assange’s extradition to the U.S. in June 2022 as London’s High Court turned down his request for an appeal.

The two-day hearing that began on Tuesday (February 20) is the final attempt by Mr. Assange’s legal team to reverse the extradition decision, which is why it has been dubbed his ‘last chance’. “This hearing marks the beginning of the end of the extradition case, as any grounds rejected by these judges cannot be further appealed in the U.K. – bringing Assange dangerously close to extradition,” the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders has said.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Jill Edwards, has also urged Britain to halt the possible extradition, saying that Mr. Assange would be at “risk of treatment amounting to torture if extradited. “The risk of being placed in prolonged solitary confinement, despite his precarious mental health status, and to receive a potentially disproportionate sentence raises questions as to whether Mr. Assange’s extradition to the United States would be compatible with the United Kingdom’s international human rights obligations…” the statement read.

What legal options are available to Assange?

There are two possible outcomes for Mr. Assange’s case at the moment. If the court accepts his appeal, his case will proceed to a full appeal. However, if the court denies his request, all judicial remedies will be exhausted and the British authorities will be able to extradite him to the United States. Mr. Assange could potentially face life imprisonment if found guilty in the U.S.

He does have the option to request intervention from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to stop his extradition, but it may be too late by the time the ECHR can act. An application to halt his extradition is already pending with the ECHR.

According to news agencies, the two-judge panel reviewing Mr. Assange’s case is expected to take several weeks to make a decision. As a result, the WikiLeaks founder will have to continue waiting despite concerns about his deteriorating health.