Julian Assange Is Released From Prison After A US Plea Deal

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder and former editor-in-chief, has been released from prison in the UK after agreeing to plead guilty to violating the US Espionage Act.

The WikiLeaks account on X, formerly Twitter, revealed the news after Assange was granted bail by the High Court in London. It also tweeted a video appearing to show Assange at London’s Stansted airport boarding a plane.

The controversial figure is expected to appear in a US courtroom in the Northern Mariana Islands on June 26 to finalize his plea deal with the US Justice Department. Prosecutors have recommended a sentence of 62 months, but as Assange has already spent over five years in a UK prison, he won’t be incarcerated in the US and will instead return to Australia — his country of citizenship — straight after legal proceedings.

Assange was editor-in-chief of the WikiLeaks website when it published classified information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, uncovered by whistleblower Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence officer. By 2010, Sweden had issued an arrest warrant for Assange over sexual assault allegations by two women.

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After a warrant was issued for his arrest, Julian Assange sought asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He lived there for seven years until being evicted for “discourteous and aggressive behavior,” at which point he was arrested by London’s Metropolitan Police on behalf of the US government.

In WikiLeaks’ announcement of Assange’s release, it stated that he had left Belmarsh maximum security prison “after having spent 1,901 days there”. The organization added that the “global campaign” by “press freedom campaigners, legislators, and leaders from across the political spectrum” allowed “a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice” that led to the successful plea deal.