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.”

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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.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange waves after landing at RAAF air base Fairbairn in Canberra, Australia, on June 26 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned to his homeland Australia aboard a charter jet on Wednesday, hours after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concludes a drawn-out legal saga.

The criminal case of international intrigue, which had played out for years, came to a surprise end in a most unusual setting with Mr. Assange, 52, entering his plea in a U.S. district court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands. The American commonwealth in the Pacific is relatively close to Mr. Assange’s native Australia and accommodated his desire to avoid entering the continental United States.

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Mr. Assange raised his right fist as he emerged for the plane and his supporters at the Canberra airport cheered from a distance. Dressed in the same suit and tie he wore during his earlier court appearance, he embraced his wife Stella Assange and father John Shipton who were waiting on the tarmac.

He was accompanied on the flights by Australian Ambassador to the United States Kevin Rudd and High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Stephen Smith, both of whom played key roles in negotiating his freedom with London and Washington.

The flights were paid for by the “Assange team,” Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said, adding his government played a role in facilitating the transport.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Parliament that Mr. Assange’s freedom, after he spent five years in a British prison fighting extradition to the U.S., was the result of his government’s “careful, patient and determined work.”

“Over the two years since we took office, my government has engaged and advocated including at leader-level to resolve this. We have used all appropriate channels,” Mr. Albanese said.

Mr. Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson, speaking outside the Saipan court, thanked Mr. Albanese “for his statesmanship, his principled leadership and his diplomacy, which made this outcome possible.”

It is unclear where Mr. Assange will go from Canberra and what his future plans are. His South African lawyer wife and mother of his two children, Stella Assange, has been in Australia for days awaiting her husband’s release.

Another of Julian Assange’s lawyers, Barry Pollack, expected his client would continue vocal campaigning.

“WikiLeaks’s work will continue and Mr. Assange, I have no doubt, will be a continuing force for freedom of speech and transparency in government,” Mr. Pollack told reporters outside the Saipan court.

Assange’s father John Shipton said ahead of his son’s arrival that he hoped the iconoclastic internet publisher was coming home to the “great beauty of ordinary life.”

“He will be able to spend quality time with his wife, Stella, and his two children, be able to walk up and down the beach and feel the sand through his toes in winter, that lovely chill,” Mr. Shipton told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

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.)