The End Of The Biggest Press Freedom Case Of The Century

A global effort by advocates, campaigners, journalists, organizers, and supporters helped WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange finally leave prison

Julian Assange (Credit: WikiLeaks)

A global effort by advocates, campaigners, journalists, organizers, and supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pushed President Joe Biden’s administration to finally free Assange. 

On June 24, Assange left His Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh in London. He flew to the Northern Mariana Islands, a United States commonwealth in the Pacific Ocean. He was scheduled to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information under the Espionage Act and then fly home to Australia. 

The U.S. Justice Department agreed to a sentence of about five years, a little less than the time that he spent detained at Belmarsh. They also agreed to a plea deal without requiring Assange to travel to the continental U.S. for a hearing in the Eastern District of Virginia courthouse just outside of Washington, D.C.  

WikiLeaks credited the worldwide campaign for Assange’s freedom for creating space for a “long period of negotiations” with the Justice Department, which led to a deal. 

His wife Stella Assange declared in a video recorded on June 19, “Throughout the years of Julian’s imprisonment and persecution, an incredible movement has been formed, a movement of people from all walks of life from around the world, who support not just Julian, and not just us and our family, but what Julian stands for—truth and justice.” 

“We still need your help. What starts now with Julian’s freedom is a new chapter,” she added. 

“The cost to Julian, of course, has been to deprive him of freedom for all these years in the battle for journalistic freedom and freedom to publish—the foundation of democracy,” WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson stated in the same video. 

But Hrafnsson made it clear this “important day of joy, the day of Julian’s freedom” would not have been possible without the support of people from all over the world. 

Read the full article at The Dissenter.