Julian Assange’s judicial ordeal has lasted 14 years, since in 2010 his creation Wikileaks published classified US documents received from former soldier Chelsea Manning on American war crimes. Since Monday, the Australian activist is once again a free man after five uninterrupted years in maximum security prison in London, where he waited for British justice to decide his fate: free him or hand him over to the hands of the United States, where he risked a prison sentence up to 175 years in prison.
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After all these years and long months of underground negotiations with Washington, Assange has however found an agreement: he has pleaded guilty to the crimes he is accused of in exchange for his freedom. The founder of WikiLeaks “left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of June 24, after having spent 1901 days there – we read in a statement published on the organization’s X account – He was granted bail by High Court in London and was released in the afternoon at Stansted Airport, where he boarded a plane and departed the United Kingdom.”
In recent months there had been no indication of a possible agreement between the parties. British justice continued to postpone a final decision, while it was only known that negotiations had been started between Assange’s lawyers and the United States to prevent the 52-year-old Australian from having to spend the rest of his days in an American maximum security prison. Fundamental, over the course of all these years, as also recalled by Wikileaks’ involved grassroots organizers, press freedom activists, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations,” it said. “This created space for a long period of negotiations with the U.S. Department of Justice that led to a deal that has not yet been formally finalized. Assange, after more than five years in a 2×3 meter cell, isolated 23 hours a day, will soon be reunited with his wife Stella Assange and their children, who only met their father behind bars.”
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