Saipan, US:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty in a US court in Saipan on Wednesday, AFP reporters said, in a plea bargain that will leave him a free man after years of legal drama.

The 52-year-old admitted to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defence information in the courtroom in the Northern Mariana Islands, a Pacific US territory.

“Guilty to the information,” Assange said, later joking to the judge during the proceedings that whether he is satisfied “depends on the outcome of the hearing”.

Assange has long been wanted by Washington for releasing hundreds of thousands of secret US documents from 2010 as head of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

He was released Monday from a high-security British prison where he had been held for five years while he fought extradition to the United States.

On Wednesday, he is expected to be sentenced to five years and two months in prison, with credit for the same amount of time he spent behind bars in Britain.

Assange’s wife Stella said he would be a “free man”, thanking supporters who have campaigned for his release.

“We weren’t really sure until the last 24 hours that it was actually happening,” she told BBC radio, saying she was “just elated”.

The Northern Mariana Islands was chosen because of Assange’s unwillingness to go to the continental United States and because of its proximity to Australia, a court filing said.

After the hearing is done, Assange will fly to Canberra in Australia, WikiLeaks said on social media platform X, adding that the plea bargain “should never have had to happen.”

The Australian government said his case had “dragged on for too long” and there was “nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration”.

– End of an ordeal –

Since 2010 Assange has become a hero to free speech campaigners and a villain to those who thought he had endangered US security and intelligence sources.

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

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

The United Nations hailed Assange’s release, saying the case had raised “a series of human rights concerns”.

Assange’s mother Christine Assange said in a statement carried by Australian media that she was “grateful that my son’s ordeal is finally coming to an end.”

But former US vice president Mike Pence slammed the plea deal on X as a “miscarriage of justice” that “dishonors the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our Armed Forces.”

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

– Extradition battle –

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

He was arrested after spending seven years 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 through WikiLeaks included video showing civilians being killed by fire from a US helicopter gunship in Iraq in 2007. The victims included a photographer and a driver from Reuters.

The United States accused Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act and supporters warned he risked being sentenced to 175 years in prison.

The British government approved his extradition in June 2022 but, in a recent twist, two British judges said in May that he could appeal against the transfer.

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

The Australian government made an official request to that effect in February and Biden said he would consider it, raising hopes among Assange supporters that his ordeal might end.

In the first official US reax to the plea deal, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that as the case is about to go before a judge, “I think it’s appropriate for me to not comment on the matter at this time.”

(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 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.)