US authorities withdraw extradition request for Julian Assange and reach agreement – ​​reports from the UK

According to British media reports, Julian Assange will not be extradited from Britain to the USA following the agreement with US authorities.

The Wikileaks founder is instead scheduled to attend a court hearing in Saipan in the US Commonwealth territory of the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

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The agreement ends a 14-year extradition battle with US authorities, where he is wanted on charges related to WikiLeaks’ online publication of more than 500,000 secret government, military and diplomatic documents and other reports related to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010.

According to British media reports, in return for his confession to conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, Assange will be sentenced to a prison sentence of 62 months already served – the same time he spent in Britain’s maximum security Belmarsh prison.

He will then be sent to his home country of Australia.

The operation followed a British High Court ruling in May allowing Assange to challenge US assurances about how a trial in the US would be conducted and whether his right to freedom of expression would be violated.

US prosecutors had accused Assange of working with US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to break into a Pentagon computer and subsequently publish secret diplomatic cables and military files.

He has always denied the allegations. His supporters said the revelations were in the public interest.

Assange is charged under the US Espionage Act with 17 counts of espionage and one count of computer misuse. His lawyers fear that if convicted he could face up to 175 years in prison, while US authorities have said the sentence will be significantly shorter.

Journalists’ organizations around the world say that prosecuting Assange under the US Espionage Act would be a serious blow to press freedom.

In one of the most sensational government whistleblower cases in recent times, Assange has been trying to avoid extradition to the United States since 2011.

His struggle began in August 2010 after Swedish prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for him following accusations of rape and sexual abuse, charges which were later dropped.

Shortly afterwards, he left Sweden and went to Great Britain. A London court ruled in 2011 that he could be extradited to Sweden.

Assange continued to deny the allegations but said he did not want to travel to Sweden to testify because he feared it would facilitate his extradition to the United States.

To avoid extradition to Sweden, he jumped bail in June 2012 and sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

He remained at the embassy until April 2019, when Ecuador revoked his asylum status after he fell out of favor with Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno, who replaced his original protector, President Rafael Vicente Correa, in 2017.

British police promptly arrested Assange for breaching bail conditions in connection with the 2012 Swedish charges and on behalf of US authorities.

He has spent the last five years in Britain’s maximum security Belmarsh prison in southeast London, fighting extradition.

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