Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, has been released from a London prison where he had been held for five years and left the UK after reaching a plea agreement with US federal prosecutors for violating US espionage laws. The agreement also allows him to return to his native Australia.
AFP quoted Assange's wife Stella as saying in a post on social media platform X on Tuesday (June 25): "Julian is free!!!!" After confirming that Assange had left Belmarsh Prison, a maximum-security prison in southeast London, she wrote in the post: "Words cannot express our great gratitude to everyone around the world who supports the release of Assange."
The 52-year-old Australian journalist was taken from Belmarsh prison, where he spent 1,901 days, to London Stansted Airport on Monday morning, where he boarded a flight to an undisclosed destination, according to a statement from WikiLeaks.
Reuters reported that the U.S. federal prosecutors team stated in legal documents that Assange agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal charge of "conspiring to obtain and disclose confidential U.S. defense documents."
In 2010, WikiLeaks revealed thousands of inhumane crimes committed by the United States in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, shocking the international community. This was the largest leak in the history of the US military.
In addition, WikiLeaks later released 250,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables, which included intelligence sent back by U.S. diplomats from various places about the governments and officials of the host countries, as well as their private conversations with high-ranking officials from various countries. WikiLeaks' leaks dealt a heavy blow to the U.S.'s reputation and diplomatic image.
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