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(LifeSiteNews) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been released from prison after agreeing to a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department.

On Monday, the high-profile journalist was released from prison after agreeing to a deal in which he plead guilty for his involvement in publishing classified information received from a whistleblower working inside the U.S. government.

As CNN reported, Assange will receive a 62-month prison sentence according to the terms of the agreements. The sentence equals the time he spent in the high-security prison Belmarsh near London. The time served will be credited toward his sentence, allowing Assange to leave prison immediately and return to his native Australia.

“Julian Assange is free,” WikiLeaks announced in its statement posted on X, formerly Twitter. “He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK.”

JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREE

Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a…

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 24, 2024

“This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations. This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised. We will provide more information as soon as possible.”

“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,” the statement continued, adding that “WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions. As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles, and for the people’s right to know.”

Assange is expected to officially plead guilty in a court in the Northern Mariana Islands on Wednesday, a U.S. territory located in the Pacific Ocean relatively close to Assange’s native Australia.

Assange faced life in prison in the U.S. for 17 counts of espionage and one charge of computer misuse related to the publication of millions of classified documents by WikiLeaks.

Assange’s legal battle began in 2010 when WikiLeaks published classified documents regarding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, including a video that showed a U.S. military helicopter killing several civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in Baghdad, Iraq. The information was provided by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. From 2012 to 2019, Assange lived in the Ecuadorian embassy in London under asylum status. After he was arrested by Metropolitan police in 2019 under an extradition warrant from the U.S. government, Assange was imprisoned at Belmarsh, a high-security prison close to London, where he has been held in solitary confinement up until Monday.

READ: Julian Assange’s extradition to the US postponed again by UK court

According to sources cited by CNN, officials at the Justice Department and the FBI opposed any deal that did not include a guilty plea to a felony by Assange.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald warned of the danger of Assange pleading guilty to a felony for publishing classified information, which, in the eyes of many, was not a crime but a service to society, namely providing information showing that governments are deceiving their citizens.

“I never believed that the Biden administration actually wanted to bring Julian Assange onto American soil to stand trial,” Greenwald said. “Imagine the spectacle that it would have created as Biden heads into an election.”

It would put on Joe Biden’s record that he would be the first American president in history to preside over the imprisonment, not of a source who leaked information, but of someone who published classified information, which every newspaper in the United States does on a regular basis…

The goal of… keeping him in prison was to crush Julian Assange physically and mentally, and they succeeded in doing that…

They wanted to break Assange and simultaneously send a message to any future Assanges that ‘We will ruin your life if you publish our secrets.’

Drawing parallels to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden not being allowed to return to the U.S., Greenwald said, “It is a deterrent message to keep the ability to hide their own crimes through secrecy, immune from the one vulnerability that they have which is that brave people inside the government leak that information to the public or through the media and reveal what it is they are doing.”

READ: Julian Assange’s show trial could determine the future of press freedom in the West

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