[News:] Julian Assange to be Freed in U.S. Plea Deal

(London, U.K.) After more than five years of incarceration, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange left H.M.P. Belmarsh on Monday after reportedly agreeing a plea deal with the United States that will see him go free.

According to legal filings with the U. S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, Assange is set to appear in the court near Guam in the Philippine Sea for a Rule 11 hearing at 9am local time on Wednesday.

There, ahead of Judge Ramona Manglona, Assange is set to plead guilty to one count of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information relating to the national defense of the United States. He is then expected to receive a prison sentence of 62 months, set to be nullified by the time already spent in prison, before being released.

In a letter to the court, Matthew McKenzie, Deputy Chief of Counterintelligence and Export Control at the U.S. Department of Justice, said: “We appreciate the Court accommodating these plea and sentencing proceedings on a single day at the joint request of the parties, in light of the defendant’s opposition to traveling to the continental United States to enter his guilty plea and the proximity of this federal U.S. District Court to the defendant’s country of citizenship, Australia, to which we expect he will return at the conclusion of the proceedings.”

Meanwhile, in social media posts that showed Assange board a plane in Stanstead Airport in London on Monday, WikiLeaks said Assange left H.M.P. Belmarsh that morning before being granted bail at the U.K. High Court at the Royal Courts of Justice. He then boarded the plane and departed the country later that afternoon, the organisation said.

“This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations,” WikiLeaks further stated.

“This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the U.S. Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised. We will provide more information as soon as possible.”

In the final lines of its note, WikiLeaks said that as Assange returns to Australia, it thanks “all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom. Julian’s freedom is our freedom.”