Wikileaks Founder Pleads Guilty in Deal with US That Secures His Freedom — Agency

Julian Assange pleaded guilty to a single felony charge for publishing US military secrets in federal court in Saipan

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko

© AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko

NEW YORK, June 26. /TASS/. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has pleaded guilty in a deal with the US that will secure his freedom, the Associated Press reports.

According to the media outlet, Assange pleaded guilty to a single felony charge for publishing US military secrets in federal court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth in the Pacific.

The deal will allow Assange to return to Australia, his home country.

"The abrupt conclusion enables both sides to claim a degree of victory, with the [US] Justice Department able to resolve without trial a case that raised thorny legal issues and that might never have reached a jury at all given the plodding pace of the extradition process," the Associated Press notes.

In 2019, Assange was placed in Britain's Belmarsh prison after being removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. For more than five years, Washington kept trying to ensure the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder from Britain to the United States, where he was accused of crimes related to the largest case of disclosure of classified information in American history.