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Julian Assange Had to PAY For Hired Flight to US FED Court in Mariana Islands
From a 2am Prison Call: How Julian Assange Finally Gained Freedom
Assange is scheduled to appear Wednesday morning in federal court in the Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth in the Western Pacific, to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defence information.
He will return to his home country of Australia after his plea and sentencing..He had NOT been permitted to fly commercially...
The Guardian 26 JUN 2024
A lawyer’s offer, a judgment that foretold years of legal wrangling, and diplomatic pressure all played a part in the release of the WikiLeaks founder
At 2am on Monday, Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, was woken in his small cell in the high-security Belmarsh prison, south-east London, and ordered to dress before being put in handcuffs.
It was the beginning of the end of Assange’s incarceration in Britain but it was going to be on his jailers’ terms.
“He was brought into a transport vehicle and put in a tiny box there, where he basically sat for three hours,” said Kristinn Hrafnsson, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, of his friend’s delivery to Stansted airport in Essex, 40 miles (65km) north-east of the capital.
“There were up to 40 policemen guarding the outside,” Hrafnsson said. “There was a helicopter hovering overhead, six police vehicles in a convoy to the airport, when they knew they were driving him basically out of the country in accordance to the agreement that has been drawn up.
“It begs the question: why on earth? What on earth did they envision? That he will abscond on his way to freedom?”
After seven years hiding away in a small room of the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge, central London, and a further five in Belmarsh, Assange, now 52, is expected to walk out of a hearing at a US district court on the Pacific island of Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands, as a free man.
He will plead guilty to a single criminal charge of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents, at which point US prosecutors will play their part in the plea deal by seeking a 62-month sentence. This will take into account the time Assange has spent in jail, allowing him to immediately return to his native Australia.
The final moments of the Assange saga had been tightly choreographed. A social media-friendly video of Assange’s release into the hands of his British lawyer, Gareth Pierce,
A crowdfunding appeal was started to cover the $520,000 (£410,000/$A783,000) cost of the Bombardier Global 6000 jet that took him to Saipan.
He had not been permitted to fly commercially.
Right until the end, there was jeopardy for a man once named an “enemy of the US state” for his role in the publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
His wife, Stella, said: “We weren’t really sure until the last 24 hours that it was actually happening.”
The genesis of Assange’s release had been in a plea deal proposed by his lawyers to the US justice department in March.
The US had been pursuing Assange for extradition over 18 charges, exposing him to up to 175 years in prison. Assange’s lawyers suggested their client, who had physical and mental health problems, could instead plead guilty to one count remotely from London. With time served, he could then be released.
The US justice department was not convinced. Hrafnsson, who was the last person to see Assange in his cell in Belmarsh when he visited on Saturday, said the real turning point had been a high court ruling in May.
At last, Julian Assange is free. But it may have come at a high price for press freedom
Flight tracker showing plane carrying Julian Assange - departing from Bangkok
Judge Wishes Julian Assange ‘Happy Birthday’ Before Freeing Him After 12 Years
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