Julian Assange’s Wife Urges Supporters to Keep ‘Eyes’ on Case as He is Freed from UK Prison and Set to Appear Before US Judge

Julian Assange will reportedly seek a pardon after pleading guilty to violating US espionage law in a deal that has seen him released from a British prison and will allow him to return to his native Australia.

The 52-year-old, until Monday, had been held, without trial, at London’s Belmarsh prison while he awaited his next court date having, in May, won the right to appeal against an extradition to America.

He had been at the prison for more than five years following his arrest at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in 2019 for skipping bail. The WikiLeaks founder had been staying there since 2012, having sought asylum to avoid extradition to Sweden on a rape allegation – announced in August 2010 – that was later dropped.

Assange’s wife, Stella Assange, posted on X (formerly Twitter) shortly before 10.30am on Tuesday that her husband had landed in Bangkok and was soon to depart for the US where he will appear before a judge in the Northern Mariana Islands – a US commonwealth in the Pacific Ocean. Any pardon would later be granted by the US President.

She urged people to “please follow #AssangeJet, we need all eyes on his flight in case something goes wrong”, and shared a link to flight tracker, Flight Aware. She also thanked his supporters, saying “words cannot express our immense gratitude”.

Assange was granted bail by a High Court in London on Monday and taken to Stansted Airport, where he boarded a plane in the afternoon. WikiLeaks posted footage on X of him travelling to the airport and boarding the plane.

It noted that Assange had spent 1901 days in a 2×3 metre cells, isolated 23 hours a day, but would soon “reunite with his wife Stella Assange, and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars”.

Stella told the Press Association news agency that Assange’s trip would cost $500,000 (£393,715), which was covered by the Australian Government. The Assange campaign, she told the BBC, will pay the amount back.

Assange 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.

He is expected to appear at a hearing on the island of Saipan and be sentenced at 9am local time on Wednesday (11pm GMT on Tuesday).

According to the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, Assange is being accompanied on his flight by Australia’s high commissioner to the UK, Stephen Smith.

“Regardless of the views that people have about Julian Assange and his activities, the case has dragged on for too long, there is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia,” Albanese said on Tuesday, according to media reports.

Under the deal, yet to be approved by a judge, Assange is likely to be credited for the time he has already served in prison and face no further jail time.

The Guardian reported, citing a letter to a federal judge for the Northern Mariana Islands, that Assange was being sent to there due to its “proximity to the defendant’s country of citizenship”. He is then expected to travel to Australia.

The plea agreement comes months after US President, Joe Biden, said he was considering a request from Australia to drop the US push to prosecute Assange.

In 2010, WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents on Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history – along with a cache of diplomatic cables.

In a court document filed with the US district court for the Northern Mariana Islands ahead of sentencing, the US Government accused Assange of “knowingly and unlawfully” conspiring with the US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to “receive and obtain documents, writings, and notes connected with the national defence… up to the SECRET level”.

While Assange’s supporters and press freedom groups shared their delight over the decision, former US Vice President, Mike Pence, branded it a “miscarriage of justice”.

He wrote on X: “There should be no plea deals to avoid prison for anyone that endangers the security of our military or the national security of the United States. Ever.”

Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University which defends press freedom, said the deal averted the worst-case scenario of a full-on prosecution, but urged people to remember that Assange had still served five years in prison “for activities that journalists engage in every day.”

Jaffer, the Guardian reported, warned that the outcome could “cast a long shadow over the most important kinds of journalism, not just in this country but around the world”.

Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years jail after being convicted of violating the Espionage Act and other offences for leaking classified government and military documents to WikiLeaks. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017, allowing her release after nearly seven years.