Australian leaders cautiously welcomed an expected plea agreement that could set free Julian Assange, who was pursued for years over WikiLeaks’ publication of a trove of classified documents.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday there was nothing to be gained by keeping the Australian incarcerated.

A plane chartered by Mr. Assange landed on Tuesday in Bangkok as he heads to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific midway between Australia and Japan, where he is expected to appear in a U.S. federal court on Wednesday.

He is expected to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defence information, the U.S. Justice Department said in a letter filed in court.

Mr. Assange is expected to return to Australia if a judge accepts the plea agreement.

Public support for Mr. Assange has grown in Australia during the seven years he has spent avoiding extradition to the United States by hiding in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London and later during his five years in Belmarsh Prison.

Mr. Albanese has been lobbying since his government was elected in 2022 for the United States to end its prosecution of Assange, and his plight was seen as a test of the prime minister’s leverage with President Joe Biden.

Mr. Albanese had been a senior minister in a center-left Labor Party government that in 2010 staunchly backed U.S. criticisms of WikiLeaks’ classified information dumps. But Assange has breached no Australian law.

Mr. Albanese told parliament that Australian High Commissioner to the U.K. Stephen Smith had flown with Mr. Assange from London.

“The government is certainly aware that Australian citizen Mr. Julian Assange has legal proceedings scheduled in the United States. While this is a welcome development, we recognize that these proceedings are crucial and they’re delicate,” Mr. Albanese told parliament.

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

Foreign Minister Penny Wong acknowledged the advocacy of a range of lawmakers on Mr. Assange’s behalf, including delegates of the Bring Julian Assange Parliamentary Group who travelled to Washington last year with a letter signed by 60 Australian lawmakers calling for the prosecution to end.

Ms. Wong said Mr. Albanese had led the Australian effort, personally raising Mr. Assange with Mr. Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. “We want to see Mr. Assange reunited with his family in Australia,” Ms. Wong told the Senate. She also revealed that Mr. Assange had rejected Australia’s offer of consular visits for years until April last year when Smith made the first of his several prison visits.

Australia had argued there was a disconnect between the U.S. treatment of Mr. Assange and U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, a WikiLeaks source. Then-U.S. President Barack Obama commuted Ms. Manning’s 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her release in 2017.

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken pushed back against Mr. Albanese’s position during a visit to Australia last year, saying Mr. Assange was accused of “very serious criminal conduct” in publishing a trove of classified U.S. documents more than a decade ago.

Support for Mr. Assange crossed political party lines in Australia.

Opposition lawmaker and Assange supporter Barnaby Joyce, a former deputy prime minister, said the plea deal was an encouraging development. “We’ve just got to be still cautious, still cautious on how this proceeds because the end has not arrived,” Joyce told reporters in Australia’s Parliament House. He said Assange should not prosecuted because be committed no offense in the United States.

“If you ask me do I think what he did was morally correct? No, it wasn’t,” Mr. Joyce said. “But the issue for me is extraterritoriality.”

Opposition spokesman on foreign affairs Simon Birmingham also welcomed the apparent end to the prosecution. “We have consistently said that the U.S. and U.K. justice systems should be respected,” Birmingham said on social media.

A motion that called for the U.S. and Britain to bring the “matter to a close so that Mr. Assange can return home to his family in Australia” was supported by 86 lawmakers including Albanese in the 151-seat House of Representatives in February.

‘Power of quiet diplomacy’

Mr. Assange’s mother, Christine Assange, said the plea deal “shows the importance and power of quiet diplomacy.” “I am grateful that my son’s ordeal is finally coming to an end,” she said in a statement.

His father John Shipton used a radio interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp. in Melbourne to thank his son’s supporters. “It looks as though Julian will be free to come back to Australia and my thanks and congratulations to all his supporters in Australia who made it possible and of course Prime Minister Anthony Albanese,” Mr. Shipton said.

Julian Assange’s wife and mother of his two children, Stella Assange, was in Sydney awaiting for her husband’s return to Australia. She posted on social media an image of her talking to her husband on FaceTime and with the Sydney Opera House in the background. She said he was speaking from London’s Stansted Airport before leaving the U.K.

Julian Assange’s lawyer Geoffrey Robertson likened the case to the government-to-government negotiations behind a plea deal in 2007 that enabled Australian al-Qaida supporter David Hicks to be repatriated from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance as a suspected enemy combatant.

“It was much tougher with Assange because the Pentagon was so determined to punish him,” Robertson told ABC. “In the end, I think partly because Mr. Biden wanted to clear this off his desk in an election year … it has been resolved.”

Julian Assange was living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in 2013 when he made failed bid for election to the Australian Senate as a candidate for the short-lived WiliLeaks Party.

A plane carrying Julian Assange landed in Bangkok on June 25 for refuelling, as the WikiLeaks founder was on his way to enter a plea deal with the U.S. government that will free him and resolve the legal case that spanned years and continents over the publication of a trove of classified documents.

A chartered flight from London that Mr. Assange’s wife, Stella, confirmed was carrying her husband landed at Don Mueang International Airport.

Officials there told The Associated Press the plane was scheduled to continue to Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific, where Mr. Assange is expected to appear in court on June 26.

He’s expected to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defence information, according to the U.S. Justice Department in a letter filed in court.

Mr. Assange is expected to return to Australia, his home country, after his plea and sentencing. The hearing is taking place in Saipan because of Mr. Assange’s opposition to travelling to the continental U.S. and the court’s proximity to Australia, prosecutors said.

British judicial officials confirmed that Assange left the U.K. on Monday evening after being granted bail at a secret hearing last week.

Julian will be a free man, says Stella Assange

“Thirteen-and-a-half years and two extradition requests after he was first arrested, Julian Assange left the U.K. yesterday, following a bail hearing last Thursday, held in private at his request,” said Stephen Parkinson, the chief prosecutor for England and Wales.

The plea deal brings an abrupt conclusion to a criminal case of international intrigue and to the U.S. government’s yearslong 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. U.S. prosecutors, in contrast, have repeatedly asserted that his actions broke the law and put the country’s national security at risk.

Stella Assange told the BBC from Australia that it had been “touch and go” over the past 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.

She posted on the social media platform X that Assange will owe $520,000 to the Australian government for the charter flight, and asked for donations to help pay for it.

‘Tough battle’

Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, said the deal for Assange came about after the growing involvement of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

“This is the result of a long, long process which has been going on for some time. It has been a tough battle, but the focus now is on Julian being reunited with his family,” Ms. Hrafnsson told the PA news agency.

In a statement posted on the social media platform X, WikiLeaks said Mr. Assange boarded a plane after leaving the high-security London prison where he spent the last five years.

WikiLeaks applauded the announcement of the deal, saying it was grateful for “all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.”

There’s nothing to be gained by his incarceration: Albanese

Mr. Albanese told Parliament that an Australian envoy had flown with Mr. Assange from London. “Regardless of the views that people have about Mr. Assange’s activities, the case has dragged on for too long,” the Australian prime minister said. “There’s nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia.”

The deal ensures that Assange will admit guilt while also sparing him additional prison time. He is expected to be sentenced to the five years he has already spent in the British prison while fighting 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.

The U.S.’ case against Assange

Mr. 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 the 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 Mr. 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.

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 Mr. Assange.

The White House was not involved in the decision to resolve Mr. Assange’s case, according to a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Mr. 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 then-Republican candidate Donald Trump.

During the Obama administration, Justice Department officials mulled charges for Mr. Assange 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 physical, mental health have suffered

Mr. Assange’s family and supporters have said his physical and mental health have suffered during more than a decade of legal battles.

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

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 battle with the U.S.

SYDNEY:

Julian Assange is en route to a courtroom on the Pacific island of Saipan where he is expected to plead guilty on Wednesday to a single criminal charge in a plea deal that will see him walk free and return home to Australia after a 14-year legal odyssey.

WHERE IS SAIPAN?

Saipan is the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands (NMI), a US commonwealth in the western Pacific which begins roughly 70 kilometers (44 miles) north of Guam and stretches across 14 islands.

Like territories such as Guam or Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands are part of the U.S. without the full status of a state. Residents are U.S. citizens but cannot vote in presidential elections. Crucially, some, like Saipan, also host U.S. district courts.

Assange will appear in court at 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday (2300 GMT Tuesday)

WHY IS ASSANGE HEADING THERE?

U.S. prosecutors said Assange wanted to go to a court close to his home in Australia but not in the continental United States.

Saipan has the advantage of being relatively close to Assange’s home in Australia, roughly 3,000 km (1800 miles) south. Hawaii is more than twice as far away.

“He has to front up to charges that have been brought under U.S. law,” said Emily Crawford, a professor at the University of Sydney’s law school.

“It had to be U.S. territory but it had to be the U.S. territory closest to Australia that wasn’t a U.S. state like Hawaii.”

SAIPAN AND THE UNITED STATES

After time as a colony of Spain, Germany and then Japan, the United States took control of the island in World War Two after the Battle of Saipan in 1944.

After decades under U.S. control, residents in 1975 voted to join the United States as a territory.

The Northern Mariana Islands elected a delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 2008, but the delegate has no vote in Congress.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

U.S. prosecutors said Assange has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defense documents. He will be sentenced to 62 months of time that he has already served. If the judge approves his plea, Assange is expected to return to Australia after the hearing, U.S. prosecutors said.

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

In this photo illustration, a WikiLeaks graphic is displayed on a laptop in a cafe on Dec. 1, 2010, in New York
| Photo Credit: AP

Julian Assange, founder of whistleblower media group WikiLeaks, is due to strike a plea bargain this week that would free him from jail and allow him to return home to Australia after a 14-year-long legal saga.

What is Wikileaks?

On its website, WikiLeaks says it is a multinational media organisation that specialises in analysing and publishing databases of censored or otherwise restricted materials involving wars, spying and corruption.

It was founded by Assange in 2006 and lists several international media organisations among its co-publishers, research partners and funders. It also says that it is a not-for-profit organisation that is funded through public donations.

“WikiLeaks is a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents,” Assange said of the organisation in an interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel in 2015. “We give asylum to these documents, we analyse them, we promote them and we obtain more.”

The most controversial leaks by WikiLeaks featured classified U.S. military documents and videos from the war it waged in Iran and Afghanistan in the early to mid 2000s that it said highlighted issues such as abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody, human rights violations and civilian deaths.

U.S. authorities said the leaks were reckless, damaged national security, and endangered the lives of agents. Assange’s many supporters said the site upheld free speech and attempts to prosecute him were an assault on journalism.

What did Wikileaks publish that caused such a stir?

In April 2010, WikiLeaks released a video showing a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff. In June, a U.S. military specialist named Bradley Manning was arrested for releasing the classified video.

Three months later, WikiLeaks released more than 91,000 documents, most of which were secret U.S. military reports about the war in Afghanistan. That was followed in October by the release of some 400,000 classified U.S. military files chronicling the Iraq war from 2004 to 2009.

The releases were the largest leak of their kind in U.S. military history.

Later that same year, WikiLeaks released thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables that included candid views of foreign leaders and blunt assessments of security threats. These included cables from the former king of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah, repeatedly urging the United States to attack Iran’s nuclear program and others about China directing cyberattacks on the United States.

In the meantime, Assange was fighting against an order by a Swedish court to detain him as a result of an investigation into allegations of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion. He was arrested in December 2010 in Britain on a European warrant. Assange denied the allegations and said from the outset that it was a pretext to extradite him to the United States to face charges over the WikiLeaks releases.

In 2011, WikiLeaks released thousands of previously unpublished U.S. diplomatic cables from its cache of more than 250,000 State Department reports.

Was Wikileaks the only online activist?

No. A loose grouping of cyber activists supporting WikiLeaks launched a spate of online attacks on organisations seen as hostile to the site, and then after Assange’s arrest in 2010, they started spreading the leaked documents far and wide online.

Another group of internet activists operating under the name “Anonymous” temporarily brought down websites of credit card giants MasterCard and Visa after they had stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks.

Today, the site says it accepts donations in crytocurrencies, including bitcoin. (Writing by Miral Fahmy; editing by Neil Fullick)

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to plead guilty to the U.S justice dept. File photo
| Photo Credit: AP

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty in deal with U.S. and return to Australia

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.

No talks on Teesta water sharing without involvement of Bengal Government, says Mamata Banerjee

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on June 24 wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying no discussion on the Teesta river treaty should be taken up with Bangladesh without the involvement of the State Government. She emphasised that if Teesta river water was shared with Bangladesh, lakhs of people in north Bengal would be severely impacted due to inadequate availability of irrigation water.

NEET paper leak: four including 2 teachers booked in Maharashtra

The Maharashtra police have booked four persons, including two zilla parishad teachers, in connection with the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) question paper leak case. 

Kuki-Zo groups take out protests in Manipur seeking Union Territory

The Kuki-Zo tribal bodies took out rallies across the hill districts of Manipur calling for the Centre to carve out a Union Territory (UT) for the community, to end the ongoing ethnic conflict in the State. They said a UT with a legislature, as provided under Article 239A of the Constitution, was the solution to the crisis.

BJP to launch nationwide programme to mark anniversary of Emergency, ‘expose Congress authoritarianism’

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday said that it would launch a nationwide programme on June 25 to mark entering the 50th anniversary of the proclamation of the Emergency in 1975, to “expose” what it termed the “Congress party’s authoritarianism” and “disregard for the Constitution”.

Labour will reset partnership with India, says Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy

Days before the U.K.’s general election, the opposition Labour Party’s shadow Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, reiterated that his party would reset its relationship with India. Mr Lammy is all but certain to be the country’s next Foreign Secretary, given that Labour is most likely — as per polls — to form the next U.K. government after the country’s July 4 elections.

A fire at a lithium battery factory in South Korea kills 22 mostly Chinese migrant workers

A fire likely sparked by exploding lithium batteries swept through a manufacturing factory near South Korea’s capital on Monday, killing 22 mostly Chinese migrant workers and injuring eight, officials said.

Kremlin warns U.S. after Ukrainian strike on Crimea

The Kremlin on Monday warned the United States of “consequences” and summoned its Ambassador after Moscow said a Ukrainian strike with a U.S. missile on Crimea killed four persons. Moscow has increasingly blasted Washington and Kyiv’s Western backers for supplying weapons to be fired on Russian targets, calling them direct participants in the two-year conflict.

Legal fraternity may explore Gen AI to reduce errors, enhance efficiency

Generative Artificial Intelligence, or GenAI, is poised to transform the legal profession as many law firms and corporate legal departments are already exploring the GenAI pool, say tech savvy legal professionals and tech experts. Law firms and corporate legal departments are dipping their toes into the GenAI pool, experimenting with tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot, young legal professionals told The Hindu.

India’s current account turns surplus after 10 quarters in Q4 at $5.7 billion

India’s current account balance recorded a surplus of $5.7 billion (0.6% GDP) in Q4 FY24 against a deficit of $1.3 billion (0.2% GDP) a year ago as per data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday. The merchandise trade deficit at $50.9 billion in Q4 FY24 was lower than $52.6 billion a year ago and Q4 services exports grew 4.1% year-on-year (YoY) on the back of rising software exports, travel and business services, the RBI said.

Everton Tea India eyes new markets to increase sales volume

Everton Tea India Pvt. Ltd. has drawn up plans to increase tea bags production capacity by 20% at its Sri City SEZ unit, near Nellore to cater to the needs of export market, said a top executive. “Currently, we are producing 2.8 million tea bags per day, and it will be increased to 3.6 million tea bags by CY25,” said its General Manager Roshan Gunawardhana during an interaction.

T20 World Cup 2024: Rohit Sharma roars as India merrily marches into semifinal

Rohit Sharma once again elevated the muscular exercise of T20 six-hitting into an aesthetic art form as his 41-ball 92 headlined India’s 24-run win in the final T20 World Cup Super 8 game against Australia at the Daren Sammy Stadium in St. Lucia, on June 24. 

Paris Olympics: India secure team quotas in archery; Deepika Kumari, Tarundeep Rai set for fourth appearances

For the first time in 12 years, India will be sending a full six-member archery contingent to the Olympics, making them eligible to compete in all the five events at the Paris Games. This was made possible after the Indian men and women secured the team quotas based on the updated world rankings on June 24.

India tour of Zimbabwe: Riyan Parag, Abhishek Sharma and Nitish Reddy get maiden call-up in Gill-led team

Shubman Gill will lead a relatively inexperienced India squad for a five-match T20I series in Zimbabwe next month. Four members of the squad — allrounders Abhishek Sharma and Nitish Reddy, middle-order bat Riyan Parag and speedster Tushar Deshpande — have earned a maiden India call-up.

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.)

London:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Monday won a bid to appeal against a UK court ruling approving his extradition to the United States to face trial on espionage charges.

Two London High Court judges permitted Assange to appeal, having previously asked Washington to provide “satisfactory assurances” about free speech protections at any US trial.

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

File photo of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
| Photo Credit: AP

WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange’s battle to avoid extradition to the United States received a huge boost on May 20 when London’s High Court ruled that U.S. assurances over his case were unsatisfactory and he would get a full appeal hearing.

In March, the High Court provisionally gave Assange, 52, permission to appeal on three grounds. But it gave the U.S. the opportunity to provide satisfactory assurances that it would not seek the death penalty and would allow him to seek to rely on a First Amendment right to free speech in a trial.

In a short ruling, two senior judges said the U.S. submissions were not sufficient and said they would allow the appeal to go ahead.