Deal with US: Wikileaks founder freed from UK

Washington: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has agreed to plead guilty in US court to revealing military secrets in exchange for his freedom, ending his years-long legal drama, according to court documents released Monday night.

Assange, who had been in custody in Britain, will plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defense information, according to the document filed in court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific.

WikiLeaks reported early Tuesday morning British time that "Julian Assange is free" and had left the country. He is scheduled to appear Wednesday morning local time in the US territory.

Assange is expected to be sentenced to 62 months in prison, with credit for the five years he has served in prison in Britain. This means he could return to his native Australia.

The publisher, now aged 52, was wanted by Washington for publishing hundreds of thousands of secret US documents from 2010 as head of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.

During his ordeal Assange became a hero to free speech campaigners around the world and a villain to those who thought he endangered US national security and intelligence sources by revealing secrets.

US authorities wanted to put Assange on trial for divulging US military secrets about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This plea bargain agreement will presumably end Assange's nearly 14-year legal drama.

Assange was indicted by a US federal grand jury in 2019 on 18 counts stemming from WikiLeaks' publication of a trove of national security documents.

Announcement of the deal came two weeks before Assange was scheduled to appear in court in Britain to appeal against a ruling approving his extradition to the United States.