Julian Assange freedom: As negotiations to end the long legal battle between Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, and the United States reached a critical juncture this spring, prosecutors presented their lawyers with a choice that the man involved thought sounded like a line from Monty Python. film
“Guam or Saipan?”
It was no joke. Their path to freedom, they were told, would pass through one of two American-held islands in the blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean.
Mr. Assange, who feared spending the rest of his life in prison in the United States, had long insisted on one condition for any plea deal: He would never set foot in the country. The US government, in turn, demanded that Mr. Assange plead guilty to a felony count of violating the Espionage Act, requiring him to appear before a federal judge.
In April, a lawyer from the Justice Department’s National Security Division broke the impasse with a crafty solution: What about an American courtroom that wasn’t actually inside mainland America?
Mr Assange, fed up with five years in a London jail – where he spent 23 hours a day in his cell – quickly recognized that the deal was the best he had ever been offered. Both parties settled on Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific, 6,000 miles from the US West Coast and about 2,200 miles from their native Australia.
The long, strange journey ended an even longer, stranger legal journey that began after Mr Assange – an aspiring hacker-turned-activist who took over US national security and political institutions – was alternately celebrated and condemned for revealing state secrets. was 2010.
It includes material about American military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as confidential cables shared between diplomats. During the 2016 presidential campaign, WikiLeaks released thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee, leading to revelations that embarrassed the party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Yet the negotiations that led to Mr. Assange’s release were surprisingly amicable and efficient, as both sides acted out of a mutual desire to end the impasse that has left Mr. Assange in limbo and the department embroiled in a protracted extradition battle, according to Eight. People with negotiation skills.
The calendar was the main catalyst. By the end of 2023, senior Justice Department officials had concluded that Mr. Assange, now 52, had served a significantly longer sentence (he was held for 62 months) than many people convicted of similar crimes. were his salvation).
Although he was charged with 18 counts under the Espionage Act, and faces up to hundreds of years in prison, Mr. Assange, if extradited, tried and convicted, would have been sentenced if his sentences had been run concurrently. A sentence of almost four years would have been imposed. , his legal team recounted in a court document.
Department officials were eager to get rid of the troublesome, time-consuming case, which has targeted some Assange prosecutors as WikiLeaks supporters. A senior official said another factor in the negotiations was “evening fatigue”.
Moreover, some officials appointed under President Biden were never entirely comfortable with the Trump administration’s decision to charge Mr. Assange with activities that blurred the line between spying in the public interest and legitimate disclosures, current and former officials said.
A Justice Department spokeswoman had no comment. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland told reporters Thursday that the deal serves the country’s “best interest.”
As early as 2024, Australian leaders, including United States Ambassador Kevin Rudd and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, began pressing their American counterparts for a deal – not out of solidarity with or support for Mr Assange. actions, but because he had spent so much time in prison.
“The Australian government has consistently said that Mr Assange’s case has dragged on for far too long, and that there is nothing to be gained from his continued imprisonment,” Mr Albanese said. It was written on X on the day of its publication. “We want to bring it home to Australia.”
On April 11, the fifth anniversary of Mr Assange’s imprisonment, President Biden told reporters at the White House that the United States was “considering” Australia’s request to return him to his home country. However, US officials said the White House played no role in solving the case.
Mr. Assange was eager to go home. His wife Stella told reporters he was experiencing health problems and Mr Assange had spoken openly about his severe depression over the years. Even if he had been in perfect health, the toll of spending nearly 14 years in London was an enormous strain. He first lived in exile inside the Ecuadorian embassy and spent the next five years in Belmarsh prison in an attempt to avoid Swedish authorities investigating him for sexual abuse.
One of Mr Assange’s lawyers, Jennifer Robinson, told an Australian TV interviewer She believed the Australian pressure campaign, along with the recent positive ruling in her extradition case, had changed negotiations with the Justice Department that began six months ago.
Late last year, Mr. Assange’s Washington-based legal team, led by trial lawyer Barry Pollack, submitted proposals in which Mr. Assange would plead guilty to charges of misconduct from a site outside the United States and serve time.
Mr. Pollack also suggested that the government should charge WikiLeaks, not its founder, with a crime for obtaining and disseminating sensitive intelligence documents that Mr. Assange obtained 15 years ago from Chelsea Manning, a former US Army intelligence analyst.
The offer appealed to some of the department’s prosectors, who were eager for an exit ramp. But after a brief period of internal debate, senior officials rejected that approach, drafting a somewhat tougher counteroffer: Mr. Assange would plead to a single felony count, conspiracy to obtain and transmit national defense information, a more serious offense that included his interactions with happens Mrs. Manning.
Free speech groups believe the agreement represents a blow to press freedom, but Mr. Assange has seen no problem, conceptually, in pleading guilty on those grounds.
Instead, his initial refusal to plead guilty to the crime was rooted in his reluctance to appear in an American courtroom, fearing indefinite detention in the United States or physical assault, Ms. Robinson said in a TV interview.
He “made a rational choice,” she added.
In May, a London court ruled, on narrow grounds, that Mr. Assange could appeal his extradition to the United States. That decision promised him ultimate victory, but until then left him in indefinite captivity.
Nick Vamos, former head of extradition at the Crown Prosecution Service, which is responsible for bringing criminal cases in England and Wales, believes the ruling may have “triggered” plea deals to accelerate.
But negotiations for Mr Assange’s release appear to be well under way by then. The Justice Department presented its Saipan plan before the ruling, US officials said.
By June, all that remained was to arrange the complicated legal and logistics of transportation.
The Australian government put up the $520,000 needed to charter a private jet to take Mr Assange from London to Saipan and then back home. They have a team Appeal to supporters on social media To crowdsource compensation.
It was then a matter of coordinating his release with the British authorities, who quietly convened a bail hearing just days before he was scheduled to embark on his flight to freedom on June 24.
Mr. Assange had another ironclad demand, which came into play as the saga neared its final stages: No matter what happens on Saipan, he intended to walk out of court a free man.
Justice Department officials told the judge in the case, Ramona V. Mangalona, however, saw little chance of ruining the deal. So they agreed, as part of earlier negotiations, to allow her to go to Australia even if she rejected the deal.
It wasn’t a problem. Judge Mangalona accepted the deal without complaint, and wished him “peace” and a happy birthday on July 3, when he will be 53.
Mr Assange mounted one, modest final protest – within the constraints imposed on him by the terms of the deal.
He told the court he believed he was “acting as a journalist” when interacting with Ms Manning – but was at pains to add that he now admits his actions were a “breach” of US law.
Matthew McKenzie, one of the lead lawyers on the case, agreed to disagree.
“We deny those feelings, but admit that he believes them,” he replied.