Julian Assange has been released. This is revealed by a court document filed on Monday. The WikiLeaks founder is therefore allowed to leave prison in England and travel to his home country of Australia – but not directly. The deal that Assange’s lawyers negotiated with the US prosecutor requires Assange to first travel to the Northern Mariana Islands and plead guilty in a US federal district court to one count of conspiracy to disclose secrets about the military defense of the United States. This is a crime in the United States.
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This court date in Saipan has been requested for Wednesday, 9 a.m. local time. After the court date, the Australian should be allowed to go home unless the judge decides otherwise. The Northern Marianas is an unincorporated overseas territory of the United States with internal autonomy and its own constitution, but a US federal court. In this way, Assange can avoid entering the continental United States and US prosecutors can claim they have saved face and ensured a conviction.
What is unusual about the process is that the sentence is to be announced on the same day and Assange is to be allowed to continue his journey immediately. He will probably be credited for his long extradition detention in Great Britain. Julian Assange has been in custody in the British maximum security prison Belmarsh since 2019. US authorities have accused him of exposing secrets, plotting and carrying out cyber attacks on the Pentagon and have been pushing for his extradition for years. According to the US government, the Australian journalist endangered the lives of US citizens by publishing secret documents on WikiLeaks. Assange, who calls for freedom of the press, could face up to 175 years in prison in the proceedings.
The American criminal process is called USA v. Julian Paul Assange And in fact the case was pending in the United States District Court for Eastern Virginia under case number 1:18-cr-00111. Now it is entering the expected final stage in the US Federal District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands under case number 24-cr-14. The judge is Ramona Manglona.
(DS)
