The Guardian
Assange is reportedly travelling to a US plea deal hearing on the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands
- Assange released from prison after striking deal with US
- Explainer: what are the details of the plea deal?
- Analysis: not a clear victory for freedom of the press
Stella Assange: Julian Assange will seek a pardon after accepting charge under Espionage Act
Julian Assange’s wife has said that her husband will seek a pardon from the US presidency after making a deal to accept a charge under the US Espionage Act. The WikiLeaks founder is currently en route to Australia after being released from prison the UK.
Assange is reportedly travelling to a hearing on the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, where he will be sentenced at 9am local time on Wednesday (11pm GMT on Tuesday).
“The fact that there is a guilty plea, under the Espionage Act in relation to obtaining and disclosing National Defence information is obviously a very serious concern for journalists and national security journalists in general,” she told Reuters.
She told the agency it had been “a rough few years” and that she would not really believe he was free until they were reunited. She said she was still worried something would go wrong. Stella Assange, a lawyer who has worked on his campaign for release for many years, said:
I feel elated. I also feel worried, you know, because I’m so used to this. Anything could happen. I’m worried that until it’s fully signed off, I worry, but it looks like we’ve got there. I’ll really believe it when I have him in front of me and I can take him and hug him and then it will be real you know?
She confirmed that they intend to launch a fundraising campaign, after chartering a flight to take him from the UK to Australia via Thailand and the Northern Mariana Islands had cost $500,000 (£393k / $750k AUD). She told Reuters:
It’s Australian policy that he will have to pay his own return flight so he’s had to charter a flight and so he will basically be in debt when he lands in Canberra. We’re going to launch an emergency fund to try to get this money so that we can pay the Australian government back for his freedom flight.
The couple have two children, who are in Australia with her, but are yet to be told that their father has been released. “All I told them was that there was a big surprise,” she told the BBC earlier, saying the details of Assange’s release needed to be kept under wraps while they were travelling to Australia, and “obviously no one can stop a five and a seven-year-old from, you know, shouting it from the rooftops at any given moment.”
The plea agreement comes months after the US president, Joe Biden, said he was considering a request from Australia to drop the US push to prosecute Assange. Assange was indicted during the former president Donald Trump’s administration over the release of hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents on Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many press freedom advocates have argued that criminally charging Assange represents a threat to free speech.
