The portal WikiLeaks announced this Monday on its X account that Julian Assange left the British high security prison in the morning where he was being held and has already left the United Kingdom with the aim of returning to Australia.
“Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of June 24, having spent 1,901 days there,” WikiLeaks reported on X.
The portal assures that Assange, 52 years old and of Australian nationality, “granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted Airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and left the UK.”
“After more than five years in a 2×3 meter cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon be reunited with his wife Stella Assange and his children, who have only known their father behind bars,” states the portal, which concludes his message in X saying: “Julian’s freedom is our freedom.”
WikiLeaks also published a video in which Assange, with white hair combed back, is seen reviewing some papers and then walking up the steps of a plane.
The announcement of WikiLeaks It comes after it was revealed in court documents that Assange reached an agreement with the US Department of Justice that will allow him to return to Australia and end a long legal saga over the leak of classified documents.
Assange will appear on Wednesday at 9:00 a.m. local time (23:00 GMT Tuesday) in a court in the Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean, to finalize that agreement with the Department of Justice.
The American justice had accused Assange of up to 18 crimes for violating the Espionage Act due to one of the largest leaks of classified information in the history of the United States in 2010, which revealed secrets from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as data about the detainees at the Guantanamo base, among other matters.
Under the agreement reached with the Justice Department, Assange will plead guilty during a court hearing Wednesday to a single count of conspiring to illegally obtain and disseminate classified information. Furthermore, Assange would only be sentenced to 62 months in prison, equivalent to the time he has already served in the high-security Belmarsh prison.
The appearance will be held in a court in the Mariana Islands, due to Assange’s opposition to traveling to the continental United States and the court’s proximity to Australia, according to a Justice Department letter filed with the court.
Organizations defending press freedom have been calling for Assange’s release for years and his wife, Stella, has been leading a campaign in his defense with the participation of celebrities and political figures.
MM with information from the EFE agency.
