Julian Assange, Founder of WikiLeaks, to be Returned to Australia After Pleading Guilty

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, will soon be released after pleading guilty to the charge of 'conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense documents of the United States' and will be able to return to his homeland, Australia. According to Reuters, Assange, now 52 years old, is expected to confess to his crime in a court hearing scheduled for Wednesday, July 6, on Saipan Island, bringing an end to the lengthy proceedings of his case. It is anticipated that with this confession, he will not face any new prison sentences, and the five years he has already spent in custody will be taken into account in his sentencing. WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. military documents regarding America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2010, and its owner, Julian Assange, was accused of 'the largest security breach in U.S. military history.' Assange was first arrested in the UK in 2010. After facing sexual assault charges from Swedish authorities, he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he remained for seven years to avoid extradition to Sweden. He was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in 2019 and imprisoned for failing to pay bail. Since then, Assange has been held in London's Belmarsh prison and has been fighting against his extradition to the United States for nearly five years. The U.S. claims he endangered the lives of informants. The UK agreed to extradite Julian Assange to the U.S., but international and European journalist federations opposed his extradition.