He will be able to return to his home country of Australia.
Lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the U.S. government have struck a deal to end his decade-plus legal odyssey and allow him to return to his home country of Australia this week after pleading guilty to a felony charge of conspiring to disseminate classified information.
Under the pact detailed in court filings made public Monday evening, Assange would be sentenced to just over five years in prison, but would be entitled to immediate release because that’s roughly the amount of time he’s been jailed in England while fighting extradition to the U.S.
Adding another exotic twist to an already byzantine tale, Assange’s guilty plea to a single Espionage Act charge is set to take place Wednesday morning in U.S. District Court in the Northern Mariana Islands — a U.S. territory in the south Pacific about 2,000 miles north of Australia.
The unusual venue reflects Assange’s unwillingness to return voluntarily to the continental U.S., according to a letter Justice Department prosecutors posted on a court docket. The radical transparency activist harbors a deep distrust of the U.S. government, with he and his allies repeatedly accusing U.S. officials of plotting to have him killed with a drone.
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