After WikiLeaks released 500,000 confidential files including military records and diplomatic cables in 2010, Julian Assange, the 52-year-old founder of WikiLeaks and an Australian citizen, was wanted by the United States on 18 charges. , among the charges faced, there are 17 violations of the Espionage Act.
Assange was arrested in the UK in 2010 on a European-wide arrest warrant issued by Sweden, which accused him of sexual assault. While on bail, Assange entered the Ecuadorian Embassy in the UK to seek political asylum and subsequently lived in the embassy. After nearly seven years of trying to avoid extradition to Sweden, it was not until April 2019 that British police entered the museum and arrested Assange.
Since then, Assange has been held in London's high-security Belmarsh Prison until now, and the United States has been seeking his extradition to stand trial on charges that could see him sentenced to up to 175 years in prison.
Assange reaches plea deal with US
However, the entire case has undergone a major change in recent days. According to NBC News , Assange plans to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge this week and reach a plea agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice. According to court documents , this move will allow Assange to be imprisoned for 5 years. Released later.
U.S. Department of Justice official Matthew McKenzie said in a letter to Judge Ramona Manglona of the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands that Assange will appear in court at 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday to plead guilty to conspiring to obtain and leak confidential U.S. defense documents. The Department of Justice expects Assange will return to Australia after the court proceedings are completed.
Court documents revealing Assange's plea agreement were filed late Monday in U.S. District Court on Saipan, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean, in the Northern Mariana Islands, where Assange is expected to appear and be sentenced to 62 years. Months in prison, with time served in the UK taken into account, meaning he will be free to return to Australia, the country of his birth.
WikiLeaks officially tweeted that on the morning of June 24, local time, Assange had left Belmarsh Prison in London, England, where he had been staying for 1,901 days. He was released on bail by the High Court in London and was admitted to London Staines in the afternoon. He was released from the airport, boarded a plane and left the UK.
JUSTICE surges
According to Coingecko data , inspired by the news that Assange will be freed, the AssangeDAO governance token JUSTICE, which aims to rescue the founder of WikiLeaks, has surged 105% in the past 24 hours and is now trading at $0.0004889. In the past month, JUSTICE has experienced an astonishing increase Nearly 600%.
