WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange plans to plead guilty as part of a plea deal with the US Justice Department that which could see him walk free and bring an end to a long-running legal saga that spanned multiple continents.
Assange was charged with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, new court documents show.
According to the documents, he is scheduled to appear in the federal court in the Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth in the Western Pacific, on Wednesday morning, and will plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information, the DOJ said.
The charges against Assange in the US stem from one of the largest publications of classified information in American history, which took place during the first term of Barack Obama’s presidency.
Assange was accused by the US government of conspiring with Chelsea Manning, a military intelligence analyst, to disclose tens of thousands of activity reports about the war in Afghanistan. The documents also included unfiltered US diplomatic cables that potentially endangered confidential sources, Iraq war-related significant activity reports and information related to Guantanamo Bay detainees.
The information was shared online on Assange’s WikiLeaks website.
The new deal will allow Assange to avoid imprisonment in the US. Prosecutors will seek a 62-month sentence – the same amount of time he has already served in the high-security prison Belmarsh, in London, while fighting extradition to the US.
Last month, he won the right to appeal an extradition order after his lawyers argued that the US government provided “blatantly inadequate” assurances that he would have the same free speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from the UK.
Prior to that Assange spent seven year in self-exile at the Ecuadorian embassy, also in London.
If approved by a federal judge, the plea deal would credit that time served, allowing Assange to immediately return to Australia, his native country.
He previously faced 18 counts from a 2019 indictment for his alleged role in the breach that carried a max of up to 175 years in prison.
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