Armenian News - Tert.am
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06:39 Jun 26, 2024
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has walked free from a court in the US Pacific island territory of Saipan, after pleading guilty to violating US espionage law, in a deal that left him free to return home to Australia and brought an end to an extraordinary 14 year legal saga. On Wednesday, the US’s smallest and most remote federal district court accepted a plea deal reached between Assange and the US government, under terms which required him to admit guilt to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents. In return he was sentenced to time served, with no supervisory period or financial penalty, due to time already served in Belmont prison in London. He flew out of Saipan, headed for Canberra, at lunchtime on Wednesday. His release ends a legal saga that spanned more than a decade, in which Assange spent five years in the high-security jail and seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, battling extradition to the US, where he faced 18 criminal charg...