2024-07-07 16:25:04
Por Thanaporn PROMYAMYAI con Selim SAHEB ETTABA en Washington
After years of legal saga, Julian Assange, released from a UK prison, is on Tuesday heading to a US Pacific island where the WikiLeaks founder will plead guilty in court under a deal that will allow him to return to freedom.
The 52-year-old Australian, who is being sued by US authorities for disclosing hundreds of thousands of confidential documents, is due to appear in federal court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific, at 9:00 a.m. local time (23:00 GMT Tuesday), according to court documents released early Tuesday.
“Julian Assange is free” and has left the United Kingdom and the high-security prison where he has been held since 2019, WikiLeaks said on the X network. The organization, which released a 13-second video showing him boarding a plane, reported that he took a flight from Stansted Airport in London.
The plane landed in Bangkok at around 12:30 p.m. (05:30 GMT) for a technical stopover, before taking off for Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands at 9:25 p.m. (14:25 GMT).
There he is expected to plead guilty to “conspiracy to obtain and disclose information relating to national defense,” according to court documents.
– «Secret diplomacy» –
Assange could be sentenced to 62 months in prison, but having served a similar period of pre-trial detention in London, he is expected to be free to return to Australia.
“He will be a free man once the agreement is ratified by the judge,” Stella Assange, his wife and mother of two of his children, told the BBC on Wednesday.
The agreement involves her husband pleading guilty to one count, which relates to “obtaining and disclosing information relating to national defense,” she said.
His mother, Christine Assange, said she was grateful that her son’s “ordeal” was coming to an end. “This shows the importance and power of secret diplomacy,” she said.
The Australian government responded by saying that the Assange case had “gone on too long” and that his detention was no longer of any interest.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights also welcomed his release and “the significant progress made towards a definitive solution to this case.”
“As we have repeatedly said, this case raised a number of human rights concerns,” said spokeswoman Elizabeth Throssel.
“He should not have been deprived of his liberty for even a day for having published information of public interest,” said Rebecca Vincent, campaign director of Reporters Without Borders.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva celebrated “a victory for democracy and the fight for press freedom.” “The world is a little better and less unjust today,” he added.
Stella Assange has launched an appeal for funding to cover the $520,000 her husband must repay to the Australian government after chartering the flight from London to Australia.
– A 14-year saga –
The agreement, which puts an end to a saga of almost 14 years, including seven years of confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, comes two weeks before a new key hearing before the British courts.
Assange’s appeal against his extradition to the United States was expected to be heard on July 9 and 10.
Since 2019, when he was detained in a high-security prison in London, Assange has been fighting to avoid being handed over to the US justice system, which is pursuing him for publishing more than 700,000 confidential documents on military and diplomatic activities, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Australian, charged with 18 counts, faced up to 175 years in prison under the Espionage Act.
The British government approved his extradition in June 2022. However, in May two judges granted him the right to appeal.
– Seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy –
The WikiLeaks founder was arrested by British police in April 2019 after spending seven years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he sought to avoid extradition to Sweden in a rape investigation that was dropped later that year.
Calls for US President Joe Biden to drop the charges against him had been growing in recent years. Australia made a formal request in February, which the Democratic leader said he was considering.
“The fact that the prime minister (Australian Anthony Albanese) sometimes publicly said ‘enough is enough’, and that parliament backed him, was significant and absolutely welcomed by the United States,” Emma Shortis, a researcher in international and security affairs at the think tank The Australia Institute, told AFP.
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© Agence France-Presse
