Julian Assange pleads guilty in deal with US

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty in a US court in Saipan on Tuesday in a plea bargain that will leave him a free man after years of legal drama. The 52-year-old admitted to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defence information in the courtroom in the Northern Mariana Islands, a Pacific US territory. "Guilty to the information," Assange said, later joking to the judge during the proceedings that whether he is satisfied "depends on the outcome of the hearing".
Assange has long been wanted by Washington for releasing hundreds of thousands of secret US documents from 2010 as head of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.He was released Monday from a high-security British prison where he had been held for five years while he fought extradition to the United States.On Wednesday, he is expected to be sentenced to five years and two months in prison, with credit for the same amount of time he spent behind bars in Britain.Assange's wife Stella said he would be a "free man", thanking supporters who have campaigned for his release.After the hearing is done, Assange will fly to Canberra in Australia, WikiLeaks said on social media platform X, adding that the plea bargain "should never have had to happen."

Julian has arrived at the federal court house in Saipan.

I watch this and think how overloaded his senses must be, walking through the press scrum after years of sensory depravation and the four walls of his high security Belmarsh prison cell.

pic.twitter.com/BzgkpWPXdy

— Stella Assange #FreeAssangeNOW (@Stella_Assange) June 25, 2024

The Australian government said his case had "dragged on for too long" and there was "nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration".Since 2010 Assange has become a hero to free speech campaigners and a villain to those who thought he had endangered US security and intelligence sources.US authorities wanted to put Assange on trial for divulging military secrets about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.