WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has flown out of the UK after he reached a plea deal with US prosecutors, 12 years after he fled to Ecuador's embassy to avoid a sex crime probe.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has flown out of the UK after he reached a plea deal with US prosecutors, 12 years after he fled to Ecuador 's embassy to avoid a sex crime probe.
While he has reportedly been allowed to leave the country to go back to his native Australia, British officials have not yet confirmed his release. MailOnline has contacted the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice for comment. WikiLeaks in 2010 released hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents on Washington's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
A plane matching the one Assange was purportedly seen flying out on is heading to Bangkok, and is currently over Pakistan at time of publication. The plea deal still needs to be approved by a federal judge - but if approved, it would give him credit for time served. The deal outlines a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defense documents, according to filings in the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.
Officials in the US had alleged that Assange goaded Manning into obtaining thousands of pages of unfiltered US diplomatic cables. The trove of more than 700,000 documents included diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts such as a 2007 video of a US Apache helicopter firing at suspected insurgents in Iraq, killing a dozen people including two Reuters journalists in a video that was released in 2010.
MailOnline has contacted the embassies in London for the US, Sweden, Ecuador and Australia for comment on Assange's release. According to the Intercept, she wrote in an affidavit she gave to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights:'In fact, his position is worse than a conventional prison in many respects. His confinement is indefinite and uncertain, which increases chronic stress and its myriad of chronic physical and serious psychological risks, including suicide.
November 2010: Stockholm District Court approves a request to detain the WikiLeaks founder for questioning on suspicion of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion. An international arrest warrant is issued by Swedish police through Interpol. September 16, 2016: Sweden's Court of Appeal rejects a bid by Assange to have his sex assault warrant dropped.
August 15, 2017: Assange is allegedly offered a deal to avoid extradition in exchange for revealing the source of hacked Democratic Party emails to end speculation over Russian involvement. May 1, 2019: Assange is sentenced to 50 weeks' imprisonment by Southwark Crown Court. He continues to be held on remand in Belmarsh from September after serving the custodial sentence.February 24, 2020: Assange faces an extradition hearing at Woolwich Crown Court, where his representatives argue he cannot legally be handed to the US for 'political offences' because of a 2003 extradition treaty.
December 10, 2021: The US government wins its High Court bid to overturn the judge's decision not to extradite Assange.
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