WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has been released from British captivity, his legal team has confirmed. The publisher spent five years in Belmarsh Prison in London while fighting extradition to the US, where he was indicted on 18 counts of disseminating classified information, before being released on Tursday morning.
According to newly filed court documents, Assange will strike a plea deal in order to avoid further time behind bars.
“Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there,” WikiLeaks wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK.”
WikiLeaks said the international campaign to free Assange has created “the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalized.”
“As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom,” WikiLeaks wrote.
According to a letter from the DOJ, Assange will appear in court in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific, at 9am local time on Wednesday. “We anticipate that the defendant will plead guilty to the charge… of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information relating to the national defense of the United States,” the letter said.
The DOJ said it expects Assange to return to his home country of Australia after the proceedings.
Under Assange’s leadership, WikiLeaks published multiple top-secret files, including documents related to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a trove of US diplomatic cables. In 2010, the organization published a video of a US military helicopter attacking civilians in Baghdad in 2007 after mistaking them for insurgents.
Fearing extradition to the US, Assange spent seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He was ejected from the premises in 2019, when, under a new president, Ecuador revoked his asylum status. The activist was immediately arrested by British police and subsequently spent five years in Belmarsh, much of it in solitary confinement, after being found guilty of jumping bail.
Assange’s legal team, family, and associates have described the conditions in Belmarsh as “torture” and warned that his health significantly deteriorated behind bars.
In 2012, the WikiLeaks co-founder hosted ‘The World Tomorrow’ on RT. Over 12 episodes, the program covered a number of hotly debated topics, featuring guests such as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, former Guantanamo Bay inmate Moazzam Begg, and former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.