The WikiLeaks portal announced on the social network X that Julian Assange was released this Monday (24) from the maximum security prison where he was held in the United Kingdom and has already left the country with the aim of returning to Australia.
WikiLeaks’ announcement came after court documents revealed that Assange reached a deal with the US Department of Justice that will allow him to return to Australia and end a long-running legal saga over the leak of confidential documents.
Assange will appear on Wednesday, at 9 am local time (8 pm on Tuesday in Brasília), at a court in the Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean, to finalize the agreement with the American Department of Justice.
The hearing will take place in this archipelago due to its proximity to Australia and Assange’s opposition to traveling to the US mainland.
The US court charged Assange with up to 18 crimes related to violations of the Espionage Act due to one of the biggest leaks of confidential information in the country’s history in 2010, which revealed secrets from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as data on detainees in the United States. Guantánamo Bay base, among other topics.
Under the agreement reached with the Department of Justice, Assange, 52 years old and an Australian citizen, will plead guilty to a single charge of conspiring to illegally obtain and disclose confidential information.
Under the agreement, which still needs to be approved by a judge, Assange would be sentenced to 62 months in prison, the equivalent of the time he has already served in the high-security Belmarsh prison in the United Kingdom.
Assange had been facing charges in the US since he was indicted by a grand jury in 2019 over the massive leak of documents obtained by soldier Chelsea Manning in 2010.
These documents included a video of US troops shooting civilians in Iraq in 2007, as well as atrocities in Afghanistan and 250,000 diplomatic cables that embarrassed world leaders.
Furthermore, in 2016, Assange became involved in the US presidential election by revealing, through WikiLeaks, that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign had relied on support from the Democratic Party to undermine her competitors for the presidential nomination. of the country by the legend.
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