Washington:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has reached a deal to plead guilty to one count of violating the U.S. espionage law, prosecutors said in court papers on Monday.

He is due to appear in a U.S. federal court in the Northern Mariana Islands this week where he is expected to be sentenced to time served and allowed to return home to Australia.

Following are some key events and details in Assange’s life:

July 1971 – Assange is born in Townsville, Australia, to parents involved in theatre. As a teenager, he gains a reputation as a computer programmer. In 1995, he is fined for computer hacking but avoids prison on condition he does not offend again.

2006 – Assange founds WikiLeaks, creating an internet-based “dead letter drop” for leakers of classified or sensitive information.

April 5, 2010 – WikiLeaks releases leaked video from a U.S. helicopter showing an air strike that killed civilians in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff.

July 25, 2010 – WikiLeaks releases more than 91,000 documents, mostly secret U.S. military reports about the Afghanistan war.

October, 2010 – WikiLeaks releases 400,000 classified military files chronicling the Iraq war. The next month, it releases thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, including candid views of foreign leaders and blunt assessments of security threats.

Nov. 18, 2010 – A Swedish court orders Assange’s arrest on sex crime allegations, which he denies. He is arrested in Britain the next month on a European arrest warrant but freed on bail.

February 2011 – London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court orders Assange’s extradition to Sweden. He appeals.

June 14, 2012 – The British Supreme Court rejects Assange’s final appeal. Five days later, he takes refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London and seeks political asylum, which Ecuador grants in August 2012.

May 19, 2017 – Swedish prosecutors discontinue their investigation, saying it is impossible to proceed while Assange is in the Ecuadorean embassy.

April 11, 2019 – After Ecuador revokes his political asylum, Assange is carried out of the embassy and arrested. He is sentenced on May 1 to 50 weeks in prison by a British court for skipping bail. He completes the sentence early but remains in jail pending extradition hearings.

May 13, 2019 – Swedish prosecutors reopen their investigation and say they will seek Assange’s extradition.

June 11, 2019 – The U.S. Justice Department formally asks Britain to extradite Assange to the United States to face charges that he conspired to hack U.S. government computers and violated an espionage law.

Nov. 19, 2019 – Swedish prosecutors drop their investigation, saying the evidence is not strong enough to bring charges, in part because of the passage of time.

Feb. 21, 2020 – A London court begins the first part of extradition hearings.

Jan. 4, 2021 – A British judge rules that Assange should not be extradited to the U.S. to face criminal charges, saying his mental health problems mean he would be at risk of suicide.

Dec. 10, 2021 – The U.S. wins an appeal against the ruling after a judge says he is satisfied with a U.S. package of assurances about the conditions of Assange’s detention.  

March 14, 2022 – Britain’s Supreme Court denies Assange permission to appeal against the decision to extradite him to the United States.

March 23, 2022 – Assange marries his long-term partner Stella Moris, the mother of his two children fathered inside the Ecuadorean embassy, inside a British high-security prison.

June 17, 2022 – Britain orders Assange’s extradition to the United States, prompting Assange to appeal.

June, 2023 – Judge at London’s High Court rules Assange has no legal grounds to appeal.

Feb. 20, 2024 – Assange launches what his supporters say will be his final attempt to prevent extradition.

March 26, 2024 – The extradition is put on hold when the court says the U.S. must provide assurances that Assange will not face a potential death penalty.

May 20, 2024 – The High Court gives Assange permission to launch a full appeal against his extradition on grounds that, as a foreign national on trial, he might not be able to rely on the First Amendment right to free speech that U.S. citizens enjoy.

June 24, 2024 – The U.S. Justice Department and Assange reveal a deal in which he will plead guilty to one criminal count and be sentenced to time served.

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

Washington:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has agreed to plead guilty in US court to revealing military secrets in exchange for his freedom, ending his years-long legal drama, according to court documents released Monday night.

Assange, who had been in custody in Britain, will plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defense information, according to the document filed in court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific.

WikiLeaks reported early Tuesday morning British time that “Julian Assange is free” and had left the country. He is scheduled to appear Wednesday morning local time in the US territory.

Assange is expected to be sentenced to 62 months in prison, with credit for the five years he has served in prison in Britain. This means he could return to his native Australia.

The publisher now aged 52 was wanted by Washington for publishing hundreds of thousands of secret US documents from 2010 as head of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.

During his ordeal Assange became a hero to free speech campaigners around the world and a villain to those who thought he endangered US national security and intelligence sources by revealing secrets.

US authorities wanted to put Assange on trial for divulging US military secrets about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This plea bargain agreement will presumably end Assange’s nearly 14-year legal drama.

Assange was indicted by a US federal grand jury in 2019 on 18 counts stemming from WikiLeaks’ publication of a trove of national security documents.

Announcement of the deal came two weeks before Assange was scheduled to appear in court in Britain to appeal against a ruling approving his extradition to the United States.

Assange has been detained in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London since April 2019.

He was arrested after spending seven years holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced accusations of sexual assault that were eventually dropped.

The material he released included video showing civilians being killed by fire from a US helicopter gunship in Iraq in 2007. The victims included two Reuters journalists.

The United States has accused Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act. Supporters have warned this means he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.

The British government approved his extradition in June 2022.

In the latest twist to the saga, two British judges said in May that he could appeal against his extradition to the United States.

The appeal was to address the question of whether, as a foreigner on trial in America, he would enjoy the protections of freedom of speech accorded under the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

The plea deal was not entirely unexpected. President Joe Biden had been under growing pressure to drop the long-running case against Assange.

In February the government of Australia made an official request to this effect and Biden said he would consider it, raising hopes among Assange supporters that his ordeal might end.

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

An employee of a fast food restaurant in the US fired at a customer after argument over missing curly fries. In a lawsuit filed in Houston, Anthony Ramos said that he had gone to pick up his wife and daughter at George Bush Intercontinental Airport and stopped at a drive-thru outlet of Jack-in-the-Box restaurant. The family ordered a combo meal but found fries missing. When Mr Ramos complained about it, an argument started and one of the employees pull out a gun promoting the family to speed off in the car to avoid gunfire.

The incident happened in March 2021, but its video was released on Monday, said ABC News.

It shows restaurant employee Alonniea Fantasia Ford readying a gun and lunging out of the window to fire at the vehicle. She fired at least twice at the family, Mr Ramos’ lawsuit says.

His lawyer Randall Kallinen the family paid $12.99 for the combo meal, but did not get the curly fries, prompting an argument.

The entire incident lasted with 15 minutes, as Ms Ford got agitated and threw ice and condiments before firing at the family.

“Jack-in-the-Box needs to do a background check on employees so as not to expose their customers to someone who would attempt to kill them,” Ms Kallinen said in a statement.

The lawsuit was filed in 2022 and Mr Kallinen got the video after a discovery request, ABC News reported.

The lawsuit claims Jack-in-the-Box was negligent for not keeping customers safe.

However, the restaurant has denied all the allegations and stated it has “no control” over and “is not legally responsible” for third parties, like Ms Ford.

The employee has also been named in the lawsuit, which at least $250,000 in damages.

Ms Ford was initially charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of deadly conduct, said ABC News. She got a jail sentence of one year deferred adjudication and completed it in June, it further said citing court records.