Julian Assange Is Free: WikiLeaks Founder Strikes Plea Deal with US
"WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was released from a British prison and on his way to a remote Pacific island on Tuesday where he will plead guilty to a conspiracy charge as part of a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department, according to court documents.The agreement will free Assange and end the years' long legal battle over the publication of a trove of classified documents.
Assange was charged by criminal information — which typically signifies a plea deal — with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, the court documents said.
U.S. charges against Assange stem from one of the largest publications of classified information in American history, which took place during President Barack Obama’s first term.
Starting in late 2009, according to the government, Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning, a military intelligence analyst, to use his WikiLeaks website to disclose tens of thousands of activity reports about the war in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of reports about the war in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of State Department cables and assessment briefs of detainees at the U.S. detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
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Chelsea Manning a transgender who used to be Bradley Manning, was former United States Army soldier who was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses, after disclosing to WikiLeaks nearly 750,000 classified, or unclassified but sensitive, military and diplomatic documents.[7] She was imprisoned from 2010 until 2017 when her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama. [Wikipedia]
