WikiLeaks founder Assange en-route to final US court hearing ahead of release

WikiLeaks announced that Julian Assange was freed on bail from prison in London, where he had been held for five years while he fought extradition to the United States, which sought to prosecute him for revealing military secrets.

He flew out of London on Monday to travel to the Northern Mariana Islands – a US territory in the Pacific – where he will plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defence information, according to a court document.

A charter plane carrying the 52-year-old reportedly landed in Bangkok on Tuesday for a scheduled refuelling stop before flying to Saipan, capital of the US territory where Assange is due in court on Wednesday morning.

He is expected to be sentenced to five years and two months in prison, with credit for the same amount of time spent behind bars in Britain.

According to Assange's wife Stella, he would be a "free man" after the judge signs off on the deal, thanking supporters who have campaigned for years for his release.

She added the end of the long legal drama had brought a "whirlwind of emotions".

The court in the Northern Mariana Islands was chosen because of Assange's unwillingness to go to the continental United States, and because of the territory's proximity to his native Australia.

Under the deal, Assange is due to return to Australia, where the government said his case had "dragged on for too long" and there was "nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration".

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Extradition battle

Announcement of the deal came two weeks before Assange was scheduled to appear in court in Britain to appeal against a ruling approving his extradition to the United States.

Assange had been detained in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London since April 2019.

He was arrested after spending seven years in Ecuador's London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced accusations of sexual assault that were eventually dropped.

The material he released through WikiLeaks included video showing civilians being killed by fire from a US helicopter gunship in Iraq in 2007.

The victims included two Reuters journalists.

The United States has accused Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act.

Supporters have warned this means he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.

A plea deal was not entirely unexpected, however, as US President Joe Biden has been under growing pressure to drop the long-running case against Assange.