Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the Department of Justice, which would allow him to be released from prison to his native Australia.
The deal must first be approved by a federal judge. If approved, it would allow him to plead guilty to one charge of violating the Espionage Act by obtaining and disclosing national defense information, carrying a 62-month sentence. This would cover the time he has already spent in a United Kingdom prison, setting him free.
Assange has been held by U.K. authorities since 2019 after Ecuador ended his seven-year asylum stay in its Embassy in London over an unrelated rape case in Sweden, which was later dropped. U.K. police dragged Assange out of the Embassy and sentenced him to 50 weeks in prison for jumping bail in 2012. However, in May 2019, the United States indicted Assange on 18 charges related to WikiLeaks’s publishing of nearly half a million classified documents relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Assange’s charges meant he faced 175 years in prison. He has spent the past five years battling his extradition, which has been repeatedly delayed.
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His extradition was first delayed in January 2021 after a U.K. judge ruled that he was likely to kill himself in harsher U.S. prison conditions. Rulings went back and forth in the following years, with the main concern being whether Assange could be guaranteed a fair trial.
In April, President Joe Biden said he was “considering” ending the prosecution of Assange.
