The deal, which is expected to be finalized in a court in the Northern Mariana Islands on Wednesday, 26 June, will see the 52-year-old pleading guilty to conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defense documents.
The move ends a long legal ordeal during which Assange spent over five years in a British high-security prison and seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, battling extradition to the U.S. on 18 criminal charges.
Free press advocates and supporters, including world leaders and journalists, view Assange as a hero for exposing wrongdoing and alleged war crimes, believing he was persecuted for embarrassing U.S. authorities.
According to the U.S. government, however, he is a reckless figure who endangered lives by releasing classified U.S. documents through WikiLeaks.
On Wednesday, Assange will be sentenced to 62 months of time already served at a hearing in Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands at 9 a.m. local time (2300 GMT Tuesday).
The U.S. territory in the Pacific was chosen due to Assange's reluctance to travel to mainland U.S. and its proximity to Australia, prosecutors said.
Australian-born Assange left Belmarsh maximum security jail on Monday after being bailed by the London High Court and boarded a flight that afternoon, according to a WikiLeaks statement on social media platform X.
“I'm just elated,” his wife, Stella Assange, told BBC radio from Australia. “He will be a free man once the deal is signed off by the judge, which will happen sometime tomorrow.”
“This is the result of a long, long process which has been going on for some time. It has been a tough battle, but the focus now is on Julian being reunited with his family. The most important thing is that Julian is free,” WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson told PA Media.
The Australian government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has urged U.S. President Joe Biden to release Assange but declined to comment on the ongoing legal proceedings.
“Regardless of the views on Mr. Assange and his activities, the case has dragged on for too long," Albanese said in parliament. "There is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration, and we want him brought home to Australia.”
The rise of WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks gained prominence in 2010 by releasing hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. military documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with diplomatic cables.
Assange was indicted during former President Donald Trump's administration for the document releases, which were leaked by Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. military intelligence analyst also prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison, later reduced to seven by President Barack Obama, who deemed the original sentence disproportionate.
The documents included diplomatic cables and battlefield reports, such as a 2007 video showing a U.S. Apache helicopter firing at suspected insurgents in Iraq, killing a dozen people, including two Reuters journalists. The video was released in 2010.
The charges against Assange sparked outrage among global supporters who argue that as a publisher of WikiLeaks, Assange should not face charges typically reserved for government employees who leak information. Press freedom advocates claim that prosecuting Assange threatens free speech and journalism globally.
“It will cast a long shadow over the most important kinds of journalism, not just in the U.S. but around the world,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute.
Assange was first arrested in Britain in 2010 on a European arrest warrant after Swedish authorities sought to question him over sex crime allegations, which were later dropped. He took refuge in Ecuador's embassy for seven years to avoid extradition to Sweden, and was forcibly removed in 2019, jailed for skipping bail, and has been in Belmarsh ever since, fighting U.S. extradition.
“Millions of people who have been advocating for Julian are almost ready to celebrate,” his brother Gabriel said.
