WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange set to walk free: What is the deal he made with the US govt?

What exactly is this deal and what was the larger case against Assange? We explain.

What is Assange’s deal with the US?

Over the years, the US government has made several attempts to have Assange face trial on its soil over charges of espionage. Assange, who has been living in confinement in the UK in recent years, has appealed against this at various levels of British courts.

In a major relief to Assange last month, the High Court in London allowed him to appeal against his extradition to the US. His lawyers have reportedly been negotiating with the US Department of Justice since then. According to The Guardian, the Australian government has also reached out to the US government.

Now, he has agreed to a deal where he will plead guilty to a “single felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security material in exchange for his release from a British prison”, according to The New York Times.

Further, “Top officials at the Justice Department accepted an agreement with no additional prison time because Mr. Assange had already served longer than most people charged with a similar offense — in this case, over five years in prison in Britain.”

Assange will be tried in a US court on the island of Saipan at 9 am on Wednesday (local time). Saipan is located in the western Pacific Ocean and is the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands (NMI), a US commonwealth. Assange has opposed extradition to the US mainland.

Who is Julian Assange and what is WikiLeaks?

Assange, 52, is Australian. Early on in his life, he displayed an interest in computer hacking. These skills were put to use in a website called WikiLeaks, which he founded in 2006. It describes itself as a media organisation that publishes confidential government and corporate documents to maintain transparency.

Assange shot to global prominence within a few years of the website’s launch. Some of its most notable “leaks” were documents from the US government, saying the US military had killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents during the wars it fought in Afghanistan and Iraq.

One video showed a US Apache helicopter firing at suspected insurgents in Iraq. It ended up killing a dozen people, including two staffers from the news agency Reuters, and showed the US military crew laughing at the casualties.

In 2010, the same year as the military leaks, WikiLeaks publicly released over 250,000 classified cables from US embassies to prominent media outlets, such as The Guardian and The New York Times.

What was the US government’s response?

In 2019, the US government indicted Assange on 18 charges for violating the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It alleged that WikiLeaks obtained its information illegally and sharing it endangered the lives of its officials in foreign countries.

He was also alleged to have “conspired” with US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. According to an Associated Press report, Manning was posted in Iraq and helped leak some documents to WikiLeaks. She was sentenced to 35 years in jail following a court martial, but the term was commuted and she was released in 2017.

Since the indictments, attempts have been made to extradite Assange for facing trial in the US.

What has happened to Assange since the leaks were made?

Around the time of the US military leaks, Assange was in Sweden. Here, two women associated with WikiLeaks accused him of sexual assault and molestation. He denied the charges and claimed they were part of American attempts for extradition. In a bid to escape them, he fled to London.

Swedish police then issued an international arrest warrant against him. Assange surrendered to police in the UK and was detained, but later granted bail. However, a district court ruled for his extradition to Sweden.

Fearing arrest, Assange entered the Embassy of Ecuador in 2012 to seek asylum, which was granted by the South American country’s ruling leftist government. For the next few years, Assange stayed there in a house arrest-like situation and attempted to appeal against the Sweden case.

Over time, he began having run-ins with the Ecuador government, leading to his expulsion from the embassy and revocation of his asylum in 2019. This led to dramatic scenes, with the London police sweeping in to arrest Assange for “failing to surrender to the court” over a warrant issued in 2012.

By late 2019, the Swedish cases against him had been dropped due to multiple factors, including the evidence being dated. However, Assange now had the US case to worry about.

How has the US attempted to extradite Assange earlier?

Assange was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for his actions in the UK. He was lodged in a high-security prison near London from 2019 onwards. The US also indicted him the same year and began extradition proceedings with the UK government.

A long legal battle thus began, with Assange appealing against the extradition and the US government countering him. The main issue was whether Assange would be treated humanely and receive a fair trial upon reaching the US if extradited.

Assange’s lawyers said he needed protection under the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which safeguards free speech, because WikiLeaks and its releases constituted journalistic work. They feared that he may be awarded the death penalty.

The US government argued that Assange’s actions “went way beyond those of a journalist gathering information, amounting to an attempt to solicit, steal and indiscriminately publish classified government documents,” the AP report said.

Britain’s Supreme Court refused to allow him to appeal against his extradition in 2022. This led the British government to order the extradition. However, Assange appealed against it. A High Court judge then ruled in the US government’s favour, leading to a ‘final bid’ from Assange’s lawyers.

This was eventually accepted last month, laying the ground for the current deal.