Assange, who was imprisoned for the last five years in a maximum security British prison, pleaded guilty to a serious crime for publishing military secrets of the North American nation in 2010-2011, in particular the Pentagon’s military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Australian journalist, who has fought extradition to the northern country all this time, appeared at the hearing scheduled for today in this capital of the largest island of the Northern Marianas, a US community in the western Pacific.
The location, although it seems taken from a film script, is the final point of the legal soap opera to which Assange was subjected due to years of persecution for asserting the right to information through WikiLeaks.
The Department of Justice agreed to hold the hearing in the Northern Mariana Islands due to Assange’s opposition to entering the continental United States and because he will literally be on the way home (Australia).
Before captivity in London, the founder of WikiLeaks spent seven years in asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in the British capital (2012-2019) to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he was accused of rape and sexual assault, something he always denied.
Assange arrived on the island of Saipan the day before “to formalize the plea agreement that should never have taken place,” WikiLeaks reported on the social network X.
The international community reacted with joy after hearing the news of the freedom of the founder of WikiLeaks, who will turn 53 on July 3 and who, if he had been extradited to the United States, faced the possibility of a sentence close to two centuries in prison. jail.
The guilty plea in the aforementioned crime would lead to a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, but in this case five were ruled, which are settled taking into account the time Assange spent in the British prison in a 2×3 meter cell. , isolated 23 hours a day.
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