WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been released from Belmarsh, as he spent the last 12 years fighting for his freedom, Daily Mail reports
According to the report by Daily Mail, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange flew out of the UK on Monday apparently a free man after reaching a plea deal with US authorities over spy charges that have dogged him for more than a decade.
In the coming hours, the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, 52, is expected to plead guilty to a single espionage charge in a court appearance on a tiny US-controlled Pacific island and prosecutors will seek a sentence equivalent to time served.
WikiLeaks published footage of the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange being driven from Belmarsh jail in London, where he has been detained for five years, to Stansted Airport. He then boarded a private jet that landed in Bangkok, Thailand to refuel.
Assange has been a wanted man since 2010 when WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents on Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history – along with swathes of diplomatic cables.
In 2012, as authorities circled him for that and over ‘credible and reliable’ sex crime allegations from a woman in Sweden, he fled into London’s Ecuadorian embassy where he remained for seven years in often farcical circumstances.
After falling out with the south American nation’s rulers he was dragged out of his bolthole in 2019 and locked up in Belmarsh while the US attempted to extradite him.
But that legal process ended abruptly yesterday, and WikiLeaks broke the news with a post on X reading: ‘Julian Assange is free!’
In a pre-recorded video filmed outside Belmarsh prison, Assange’s wife Stella and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said: ‘If you’re seeing this, it means he is out’.
Assange, who has been sought for over a decade over allegations he hacked the US government, today left HMP Belmarsh in London and flew out of the country on a flight from Stansted at 5pm today
While he has reportedly been allowed to leave the country to go back to his native Australia, British officials have not yet confirmed his release.
He spent the last 12 years years in prison or holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London
The group said: ‘After more than five years in a 2×3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon reunite with his wife Stella Assange, and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars.’
Assange married Stella, a South African-born lawyer who he met when she joined his legal team in 2011, while locked up in Belmarsh in 2022. Last night she posted on X: ‘Julian is free!!!! Words cannot express our immense gratitude to YOU – yes YOU, who have all mobilised for years and years to make this come true. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.’
The couple have two children together, conceived while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy.
While he has apparently been allowed to leave the UK to go back to his native Australia, British officials have not yet confirmed his release.
MailOnline has contacted the UK’s Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice for comment.
The Assange circus is now expected to shift to the tiny US-controlled Pacific island of Saipan, 1,500 miles east of the Philippines, where Assange is listed to appear in court at 9am local time on Wednesday (12am London, 7pm Tuesday in New York, 9am Wednesday in Sydney).
Matthew McKenzie, deputy chief of counterintelligence and export control at the US Department of Justice, and Shawn Anderson, the US Attorney for the Districts of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, said they expected Assange to return to Australia after the proceedings have concluded.
A plane matching the one Assange was purportedly seen flying out on is heading to Bangkok.
Assange’s family and friends welcomed his release this morning.
His mother Christine Assange said: ‘I am grateful that my son’s ordeal is finally coming to an end. This shows the importance and power of quiet diplomacy. Many have used my son’s situation to push their own agendas, so I am grateful to those unseen, hard-working people who put Julian’s welfare first.’
His father John Shipton added: ‘It looks as though Julian will be free to come back to Australia. My thanks and congratulations to all his supporters… that have made that possible, and of course, the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese.’
Mr Shipton said he was ‘energised’ by the news.
‘I don’t fade easily, you know. And neither does Julian. It must be a family trait,’ he said.
The plea deal emerged yesterday when US prosecutors filed criminal paperwork against him in the US Commonwealth of the North Mariana Islands in the western Pacific Ocean.
The filing says Assange has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents.
In the agreement, prosecutors will look for a 62-month sentence – the same amount of time Assange has served in Belmarsh high-security prison while fighting extradition to the US.
The plea deal still needs to be rubber-stamped by a federal judge – but if approved, it would give him credit for time served.
He would then be officially released from US custody and would be able to make the 3,500-mile journey south to Sydney.
In recent months, President Joe Biden had hinted at a possible deal being pushed by officials in the Australian government to return Assange to back to his homeland.
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese today said there was ‘nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him [brought] home to Australia’.
He added: ‘I have been a very clear… that regardless of the views that people have about Julian Assange and his activities, the case has dragged on for too long’.
An Australian government spokesperson said: ‘Prime Minister Albanese has been clear – Mr Assange’s case has dragged on for too long and there is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration.’
MailOnline has contacted the embassies in London for the US, Sweden, Ecuador and Australia for comment on Assange’s release.