Wikileaks founder walks out of British prison

KABUL (Pajhwok): The Wikileaks founder has walked out of a UK prison and left for his homeland Australia in the wake of a deal with American authorities, the BBC reported on Tuesday.

Under the deal, Julian Assange will plead guilty to criminal charges and go free after a 12-year legal battle against extradition to the United States.

Charged with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information, the 52-year-old had revealed rare information about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The US has claimed for years his disclosures the WikiLeaks Files have put lives at stake, and that Assange be extradited to Washington, but he contested the move.

While fighting extradition to the US, Assange spent the last five years in a British jail. He will serve no time in US custody and will receive credit for the time spent incarcerated in Britain.

He left Belmarsh prison on Monday after spending 1,901 days in a small cell, Wikileaks wrote on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter..

His wife, Stella Assange, tweeted thanks to his supporters "who have all mobilised for years and years to make this come true".

He has agreed to plead guilty to a felony charge related to his alleged role in one of the largest US government breaches of classified materials after his website published nearly half a million secret military documents relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to CNN.

With Assange resisting a trip to the US to enter his guilty plea, a judge will conduct the hearing and sentencing together on Wednesday in Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands.

PAN Monitor/mud