SYDNEY: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is due to plead guilty on Wednesday to violating US espionage law, in a deal that will set him free after a 14-year British legal odyssey and allow his return home to Australia.
Assange, 52, has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents, according to filings in the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.
The deal marks the end of a legal saga that has seen Assange spend more than five years in a British high-security jail and seven holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London as he fought accusations of sex crimes in Sweden and battled extradition to the US, where he faced 18 criminal charges.
The US government viewed him as a reckless villain who had endangered the lives of agents through WikiLeaks’ mass release of secret US documents. Assange is due to be sentenced to 62 months of time already served at a hearing in Saipan. The US territory was chosen due to Assange’s opposition to travelling to the mainland US.