US cuts deal to save face: Assange FREE

Julian Assange is free: WikiLeaks founder's brother Gabriel Shipton on the end of decadelong legal saga

(June 25, 2024) GUEST: Gabriel Shipton, filmmaker (ithaka.movie) and Julian Assange’s half-brother.

Gay Pres. Obama vs. Chelsea Manning

UPDATE: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been freed from Belmarsh Prison in London, where he had been incarcerated for the past five years, after accepting a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors.

After a decade-plus of legal challenges, Assange will plead guilty to a single felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security material for publishing classified documents detailing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan [serving as a negative model for many other countries to do so] on WikiLeaks [in massive data releases and websites the U.S. was desperate to have Americans avoid and not dare go near for fear of surveillance and prosecution, coercing service providers into pulling their platforms from WikiLeaks].

(Global News) Married Julian Assange not dating Pam Anderson

Why did US prosecute him? To silence him with torture or ruin.

How can the System thank Obama for his service?

The Australian publisher is expected to be sentenced to time served and allowed to return home, where he reportedly will seek a pardon. Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton describes learning of his release as “an amazing moment.” He speaks to Democracy Now! about Assange’s case and what led up to the latest developments, as well as what he expects will happen next.

• VIDEO: Democracy Now! full show (6/25/24)
• Journalist Antony Loewenstein on Assange’s release, WikiLeaks, and Israeli war crimes of using drones killing Gaza journalist-reporters
• Press freedom advocates celebrate Julian Assange’s release but warn of impact of plea deal
• Will Israel expand its genocidal war into Lebanon? Rami Khouri on Netanyahu’s latest threats
• It makes sense, a country of perpetual war like the nascent USA: “The logic of escalation”: from Red Sea to Iran and beyond, Will Israel’s Gaza assault spark wider war?

(Reuters) WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is due to plead guilty on Wednesday to violating U.S. espionage law, in a deal that will end his imprisonment in Britain and allow him to return home to Australia, ending a 14-year legal odyssey.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was at a location given as London, Britain, in a video released June 25, 2024. He is presumably in a British jail at the moment.

Assange, 52, has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defense documents, according to filings in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.

The deal marks the end of a legal saga in which Assange spent years in a British high-security jail and in the Ecuadorean embassy in London and fought allegations of sex crimes in Sweden, while battling extradition to the U.S., where he faced [trumped up] criminal charges.

Portrayed as a villain by the U.S. government for potentially putting classified government sources at risk [by exposing them for their crimes by showing their own records to the world], he has been hailed as a hero by free press advocates for exposing wrongdoing and alleged war crimes.

• Opinion: Sorry, but Freeing Julian Assange Still Comes With a Price

On Wednesday, he is due to be sentenced to 62 months of time already served at a hearing in Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, at 9:00 am local time (2300 GMT Tuesday).

The U.S. territory in the Pacific was chosen due to Assange's opposition to travelling to the mainland U.S. and for its proximity to Australia, prosecutors said. WikiLeaks' Julian Assange set to be freed after pleading guilty to US espionage charge

• Sky News Australia; Alasdair Pal and Sarah N. Lynch, Reuters, Reuters via MSN.com, 6/24/24; Seth Auberon, Pfc. Sandoval (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly