WikiLeaks|According to court documents, Assange will plead guilty to one charge and be released under a deal because the United States will count the full years of British imprisonment toward the sentence.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange according to the organization, has left prison in Britain and left the country after making a deal with the United States.
According to legal and media sources, he is about to plead guilty to one charge in the United States.
The indictment concerns conspiracy to obtain and disclose classified documents related to US military operations.
In exchange, Assange’s prison years in Britain will count towards his sentence in the US in full and he would be free to go to his home country of Australia after the sentence.
The agreement is mentioned in the documents of the US district court, and it is reported by, for example, the news agency Reuters and AFP and The New York Times.
If the agreement holds, it is the end point of a multi-stage arrest and court process spanning more than a decade.
According to The New York Times, the deal has the approval of the US Department of Justice. However, the final decision is made by the judge.
The trial is scheduled to begin on Wednesday.
WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of documents in 2010 about US military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The documents told, for example, about the attack by the United States, which killed the staff of the Reuters news department, and about several alleged war crimes.
Assange was arrested in Britain in 2010 when Sweden wanted to question him about an alleged sexual crime, which Assange denied.
Assange fled to the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden. Assange said he feared Sweden would extradite him to the United States, where he faced up to 170 years in prison.
Sweden later closed the investigation into the alleged sexual crime. Ecuador revoked Assange’s asylum in 2019 and British police arrested him.
Assange spent five years in Belmarsh prison. The sentence for violating the parole order expired quickly and Britain was about to extradite Assange to the United States, which he opposed through the courts.
A situation arose where Britain did not release Assange because it was afraid that he would flee before the extradition order could possibly have the force of law.
On May 20, Assange received permission from the British Supreme Court to appeal the extradition decision to the United States, which would have delayed a possible return even further.
This may have been part of the reason why the parties seem to have finally reached an agreement.
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