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"contents": "<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Assange (52) has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents, according to filings in the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The deal marks the end of a </span><a href=\"https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?search=all%3AL6N3IM0LX&linkedFromStory=true\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">legal saga</span></a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that has seen Assange spend more than five years in a British high-security jail and seven holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London as he fought accusations of sex crimes in Sweden and battled extradition to the US, where he faced 18 criminal charges.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The US government viewed him as a reckless villain who had endangered the lives of agents through </span><a href=\"https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?search=all%3AL1N3IN031&linkedFromStory=true\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">WikiLeaks’ mass release</span></a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of secret US documents – the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But to free press advocates and his supporters, including world leaders, celebrities and some prominent journalists, he is a hero for exposing wrongdoing and alleged war crimes, and was persecuted for embarrassing the US authorities.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On Wednesday, Assange is due to be sentenced to 62 months of time already served at a hearing in </span><a href=\"https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?search=all%3AL1N3IN07Z&linkedFromStory=true\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Saipan</span></a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the Northern Mariana Islands.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The US territory in the Pacific was chosen due to Assange’s opposition to travelling to the mainland US and for its proximity to Australia, prosecutors said.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Australian-born Assange left Belmarsh maximum security jail in the early hours of Monday before being bailed by the London High Court and later boarding a flight, his wife, Stella Assange, said. He was currently on a stopover in Bangkok, she said.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“I feel elated,” Stella, who flew to Australia from London on Sunday with the couple’s two children, told Reuters.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“I also feel worried… 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.”</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A video posted on X by WikiLeaks showed Assange dressed in a blue shirt and jeans signing a document before boarding a private jet. After the hearing in Saipan, Assange will fly to Canberra where he will arrive on Wednesday, his wife said.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He recently won permission to appeal against the approval of his US extradition and the case was due to be heard at London’s High Court next month, a factor that Stella Assange said helped to galvanise talks over a deal.</span>\r\n\r\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2009064\" src=\"https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/GettyImages-128788042.jpg\" alt=\"pilger Assange\" width=\"3371\" height=\"2037\" /> <em>Journalist John Pilger (left) and Julian Assange chat before addressing the crowd during the ‘Antiwar Mass Assembly’ organised by the Stop the War Coalition at Trafalgar Square in London on 8 October 2011. The demonstration called for the British government to immediately withdraw troops from Afghanistan. (Photo: Oli Scarff / Getty Images)</em></p>\r\n\r\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2109318\" src=\"https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/12071515.jpg\" alt=\"Assange\" width=\"3072\" height=\"2304\" /> <em>People wear face masks depicting Julian Assange as they attend a flash mob in his support at Piazza Cavour, near the Mann Archaeological Museum, in Naples, southern Italy, on 3 March 2024. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Cesare Abbate)</em></p>\r\n<h4><b>‘Too long’</b></h4>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Australian government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has been pressing US President Joe Biden for Assange’s release but declined to comment on the legal proceedings because they were ongoing.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“There is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia,” Albanese said in the country’s parliament.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A lawyer for Assange did not respond to a request for comment.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">WikiLeaks came to prominence in 2010 after it released hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents on Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with swathes of diplomatic cables.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The trove of more than 700,000 documents included diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts such as a 2007 video of a US Apache helicopter firing at suspected insurgents in Iraq, killing a dozen people including two Reuters news staff. That video was released in 2010.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The charges against Assange sparked outrage among his many global supporters who have long argued that he as the publisher of WikiLeaks should not face charges typically used against federal government employees who steal or leak information.</span>\r\n\r\n<b>Read more in Daily Maverick: </b><a href=\"https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2024-02-05-the-case-against-julian-assange-has-massive-implications-for-investigative-journalism/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The case against Julian Assange has massive implications for investigative journalism</span></a>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many press freedom advocates have </span><a href=\"https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?search=all%3AL1N3IN046&linkedFromStory=true\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">argued</span></a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that criminally charging Assange represents a threat to free speech and journalism.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“It will cast a long shadow over the most important kinds of journalism, not just in this country (US) but around the world,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stella Assange said the American government should have dropped the case against her husband altogether.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“We will be seeking a pardon, obviously, but 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,” she said.</span>\r\n<h4><b>Swedish allegations</b></h4>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Assange was first arrested in Britain in 2010 on a European arrest warrant after Swedish authorities said they wanted to question him over sex crime allegations that were later dropped. He fled to Ecuador’s embassy, where he remained for seven years, to avoid extradition to Sweden.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He was dragged out of the embassy in 2019, jailed for skipping bail and has been in Belmarsh ever since, latterly fighting extradition to the US.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Millions of people who have been advocating for Julian, it is almost time for them to have a drink and a celebration,” his brother Gabriel Shiptontold Reuters from France. </span><b>DM/Reuters</b>\r\n\r\n<i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Reporting by Sarah N Lynch, Andrew Goudsward and Kanishka Singh in Washington, Michael Holden and Kate Holton in London, Lisa Barrington in Seoul and Alasdair Pal, Kirsty Needham and Renju Jose in Sydney. Editing by Scott Malone, Matthew Lewis, Sonali Paul and Raju Gopalakrishnan)</span></i>",
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"description": "<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Assange (52) has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents, according to filings in the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The deal marks the end of a </span><a href=\"https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?search=all%3AL6N3IM0LX&linkedFromStory=true\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">legal saga</span></a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that has seen Assange spend more than five years in a British high-security jail and seven holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London as he fought accusations of sex crimes in Sweden and battled extradition to the US, where he faced 18 criminal charges.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The US government viewed him as a reckless villain who had endangered the lives of agents through </span><a href=\"https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?search=all%3AL1N3IN031&linkedFromStory=true\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">WikiLeaks’ mass release</span></a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of secret US documents – the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But to free press advocates and his supporters, including world leaders, celebrities and some prominent journalists, he is a hero for exposing wrongdoing and alleged war crimes, and was persecuted for embarrassing the US authorities.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On Wednesday, Assange is due to be sentenced to 62 months of time already served at a hearing in </span><a href=\"https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?search=all%3AL1N3IN07Z&linkedFromStory=true\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Saipan</span></a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the Northern Mariana Islands.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The US territory in the Pacific was chosen due to Assange’s opposition to travelling to the mainland US and for its proximity to Australia, prosecutors said.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Australian-born Assange left Belmarsh maximum security jail in the early hours of Monday before being bailed by the London High Court and later boarding a flight, his wife, Stella Assange, said. He was currently on a stopover in Bangkok, she said.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“I feel elated,” Stella, who flew to Australia from London on Sunday with the couple’s two children, told Reuters.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“I also feel worried… 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.”</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A video posted on X by WikiLeaks showed Assange dressed in a blue shirt and jeans signing a document before boarding a private jet. After the hearing in Saipan, Assange will fly to Canberra where he will arrive on Wednesday, his wife said.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He recently won permission to appeal against the approval of his US extradition and the case was due to be heard at London’s High Court next month, a factor that Stella Assange said helped to galvanise talks over a deal.</span>\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_2009064\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"3371\"]<img class=\"size-full wp-image-2009064\" src=\"https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/GettyImages-128788042.jpg\" alt=\"pilger Assange\" width=\"3371\" height=\"2037\" /> <em>Journalist John Pilger (left) and Julian Assange chat before addressing the crowd during the ‘Antiwar Mass Assembly’ organised by the Stop the War Coalition at Trafalgar Square in London on 8 October 2011. The demonstration called for the British government to immediately withdraw troops from Afghanistan. (Photo: Oli Scarff / Getty Images)</em>[/caption]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_2109318\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"3072\"]<img class=\"size-full wp-image-2109318\" src=\"https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/12071515.jpg\" alt=\"Assange\" width=\"3072\" height=\"2304\" /> <em>People wear face masks depicting Julian Assange as they attend a flash mob in his support at Piazza Cavour, near the Mann Archaeological Museum, in Naples, southern Italy, on 3 March 2024. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Cesare Abbate)</em>[/caption]\r\n<h4><b>‘Too long’</b></h4>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Australian government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has been pressing US President Joe Biden for Assange’s release but declined to comment on the legal proceedings because they were ongoing.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“There is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia,” Albanese said in the country’s parliament.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A lawyer for Assange did not respond to a request for comment.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">WikiLeaks came to prominence in 2010 after it released hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents on Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with swathes of diplomatic cables.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The trove of more than 700,000 documents included diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts such as a 2007 video of a US Apache helicopter firing at suspected insurgents in Iraq, killing a dozen people including two Reuters news staff. That video was released in 2010.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The charges against Assange sparked outrage among his many global supporters who have long argued that he as the publisher of WikiLeaks should not face charges typically used against federal government employees who steal or leak information.</span>\r\n\r\n<b>Read more in Daily Maverick: </b><a href=\"https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2024-02-05-the-case-against-julian-assange-has-massive-implications-for-investigative-journalism/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The case against Julian Assange has massive implications for investigative journalism</span></a>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many press freedom advocates have </span><a href=\"https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?search=all%3AL1N3IN046&linkedFromStory=true\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">argued</span></a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that criminally charging Assange represents a threat to free speech and journalism.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“It will cast a long shadow over the most important kinds of journalism, not just in this country (US) but around the world,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stella Assange said the American government should have dropped the case against her husband altogether.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“We will be seeking a pardon, obviously, but 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,” she said.</span>\r\n<h4><b>Swedish allegations</b></h4>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Assange was first arrested in Britain in 2010 on a European arrest warrant after Swedish authorities said they wanted to question him over sex crime allegations that were later dropped. He fled to Ecuador’s embassy, where he remained for seven years, to avoid extradition to Sweden.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He was dragged out of the embassy in 2019, jailed for skipping bail and has been in Belmarsh ever since, latterly fighting extradition to the US.</span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Millions of people who have been advocating for Julian, it is almost time for them to have a drink and a celebration,” his brother Gabriel Shiptontold Reuters from France. </span><b>DM/Reuters</b>\r\n\r\n<i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Reporting by Sarah N Lynch, Andrew Goudsward and Kanishka Singh in Washington, Michael Holden and Kate Holton in London, Lisa Barrington in Seoul and Alasdair Pal, Kirsty Needham and Renju Jose in Sydney. Editing by Scott Malone, Matthew Lewis, Sonali Paul and Raju Gopalakrishnan)</span></i>",
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Journalist John Pilger (left) and Julian Assange chat before addressing the crowd during the ‘Antiwar Mass Assembly’ organised by the Stop the War Coalition at Trafalgar Square in London on 8 October 2011. The demonstration called for the British government to immediately withdraw troops from Afghanistan. (Photo: Oli Scarff / Getty Images)
People wear face masks depicting Julian Assange as they attend a flash mob in his support at Piazza Cavour, near the Mann Archaeological Museum, in Naples, southern Italy, on 3 March 2024. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Cesare Abbate)