Wikileaks’ Julian Assange: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who was imprisoned on charges of spying on the US, was released from London jail on Tuesday (25 June) after 5 years. He has admitted to spying under an agreement with the US government.
According to US District Court documents, 52-year-old Assange will appear in the US Saipan Court on Wednesday. Here he will accept the charge of conspiring to obtain US intelligence documents. After this agreement, he was released from Britain’s high-security prison Belmarsh on Monday. From here he left directly for his country Australia.
According to the agreement with the US, after accepting the charges, Assange will be sentenced to 62 months (5 years and 2 months) in prison, which he has already completed. Julian has so far served 1901 days in British jail. After the agreement, the High Court of London granted him bail, after which he was taken directly to Stanstead Airport.
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‘Julian Assange is free’
After the agreement, Wikileaks posted on social media and informed about the release of Julian Assange. They wrote ‘Julian Assange is free’. Julian’s wife Stella said, “I thank Julian’s supporters who have supported him for years. Words cannot express how grateful we are to them. It is because of their support that Julian is returning home today.”
America had accused him of spying
Australian citizen Assange had made thousands of classified documents public in 2010-11. This also included documents related to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Through this, he had accused the US, England and NATO forces of war crimes.
After the revelations of Wikileaks in the year 2010-11, America had accused Julian Assange of spying on their country. He published the secret file, due to which the lives of many people were in danger.
However, Julian Assange always denied the allegations of espionage. Later, Assange was also accused that during the US presidential election, Russian intelligence agencies had hacked emails related to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and given them to WikiLeaks. He was fighting a legal battle for the last 13 years.
‘Mayawati is corrupt, sends planes to get sandals’
In 2011, Wikileaks had called Mayawati a dictator and corrupt. In one of the revelations, it was said that the former CM of Uttar Pradesh had sent her private plane to Mumbai to get sandals of her choice. She has such a feeling of insecurity that before she eats her food, an employee tastes it. Nine cooks who prepare food in her kitchen are supervised.
It was also claimed in the report that she gets the road washed before leaving home for office. Apart from this, last year former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath was also accused of giving important and confidential information related to the nuclear deal to America in 1976.
Assange was arrested for the first time in 2010, 18 cases registered against him in the US
Assange was arrested in London in 2010 on Sweden’s appeal. Two Swedish women had accused him of rape. To avoid being sent to Sweden, Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012. In this way, he escaped arrest.
He stayed here in Ecuador between 2012 and 2019. On 11 April 2019, he missed appearing in court, after which he was arrested. Later, the Ecuadorian government refused to grant him asylum. The reason for this was said to be his continuous violation of international agreements. In 2019, he was arrested by the British police when he came out of the Ecuadorian embassy.
Since then he has been lodged in Belmarsh prison in London. Although Sweden dropped the rape charges against Assange in November 2019, he still remained in jail. In April 2019, the US accused him of conspiring to hack. On 23 May 2019, the US grand jury filed 18 cases of espionage against Assange.
Julian Assange was a computer programmer and hacker before founding WikiLeaks. His work earned him the Economist Freedom of Expression Award in 2008 and the Sam Adams Award in 2010.
Assange had become a hero for freedom of expression around the world
Assange is expected to be sentenced to 62 months in prison, which will be counted as full based on the five years he has already spent in a UK prison. This means he can return to his native Australia. The publisher, now 52, was arrested in Washington for publishing hundreds of secret US documents since 2010 as head of whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. During his ordeal, Assange became a hero to freedom of expression campaigners around the world and a villain to those who thought he had endangered US national security and intelligence sources by revealing secrets.
Ending a 14-year legal drama
US officials wanted to prosecute Assange for revealing US military secrets about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This plea bargain will likely end Assange’s nearly 14 years of legal drama. Assange was indicted by a US federal grand jury in 2019 on 18 counts related to the publication of national security documents by WikiLeaks. The agreement was announced two weeks before Assange appeared in a UK court to appeal against a decision approving his extradition to the United States.
Assange has been detained in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison since April 2019. He was arrested after spending seven years in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced sexual assault charges that were eventually dropped. The material he released included a video showing US helicopter guns killing civilians in Iraq in 2007. The victims included two Reuters journalists.
