Wikileaks founder Julian Assange freed from London jail in US plea deal

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been released from prison in the UK as part of a plea deal with the US government.

The 52-year-old – who came to the international spotlight in 2010 after publishing a series of leaks from US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning – was today freed from the high security Belmarsh jail in London.

For years, the US has argued that the hundreds of thousands of classified military documents – which disclosed information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars – endangered lives.

The activist was charged with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information amid what has been the largest security breach of its kind in the US military history.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange after being released from prison (Picture: AFP)

Footage of Assange published on X in the early hours of this morning shows his departure from Belmarsh where he had been locked away for the past five years.

He is headed towards Stansted Airport where he boarded a private charter plane.

It is understood that the Australian national has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal charge of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents.

In return, Assange will walk free and return to his country after years in self-exile.

This expected to take place in a court in the Northern Mariana Islands tomorrow morning.

It is a moment his supporters have been waiting for after 14 years of legal battles, campaigns and diplomatic tensions for him and his family.

Wikileaks confirmed the reports in a statement on X: ‘Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of June 24, after having spent 1901 days there.

‘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.

‘This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations.’

Who is Julian Assange and what is Wikileaks?

Assange is an Australian editor, publisher and activist who founded Wikileaks in 2006.

He became interested in computers and mathematics at a young age and by the early 90s he was considered one of his nation’s best hackers.

His website rose to prominence in April 2010 when it published a classified video showing a 2007 US helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

Wikileaks then dumped more than 90,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan, and about 400,000 secret US files on the Iraq war.

It also leaked 250,000 secret diplomatic cables from US embassies that made it to the front pages of newspapers.

The group returned to the spotlight ahead of the 2016 US presidential election when it published tens of thousands of emails belonging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairperson.

Arrest of Assange and legal battle

A Swedish court ordered Assange’s detention in November 2010 as a result of an investigation into allegations of sex crimes made by two female Swedish Wikileaks volunteers.

He was arrested by British police in December 2010 on a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) issued by Sweden.

The activist denied all allegations, claiming that it was a pretext to extradite him to the US to face charges over the leaks.

In June 2012, Assange sought political asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy where he then spent seven years in hiding.

Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation in 2017 but British police said he would still be arrested if he left the embassy over his failure to surrender to bail.

It was two years later that Ecuador revoked his asylum and he was carried out of the building before being thrown into jail.

Years of legal battles between US prosecutors and London’s High Court followed.

This is a developing news story, more to follow soon… Check back shortly for further updates.

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