Julian Assange is on his way to a US court on the Pacific island following a plea deal

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is due to appear in a US court on Wednesday, where he will formally abandon a plea deal after a 14-year legal battle.
Mr Assange is expected to arrive in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean. On Tuesday, he left a British prison and flew to the Thai capital of Bangkok to refuel.
Mr Assange, 52, was wanted by US authorities on charges related to a massive leak of classified files in 2010, which they said threatened his life.
Reacting to the deal – which will see Mr Assange plead guilty to one charge – his wife Stella told the BBC she was “delighted”.

As part of his long legal marathon, Mr Assange has spent the past five years behind bars in Britain, resisting US efforts to extradite him.
He also faced separate charges of rape and sexual assault in Sweden, which he denied. He spent seven years hiding in Ecuador’s London embassy, ​​claiming the Swedish case would extradite him to the US.
Swedish authorities dropped the case in 2019, saying too much time had passed since the original complaint, but UK authorities later took him into custody. He was tried for non-surrender before the courts to extradite him to Sweden.

In the US, Mr Assange was charged in 2010 with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, following major WikiLeaks revelations.
WikiLeaks released a video from a US military helicopter that showed civilians being killed in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
It also released thousands of classified documents showing that the US military killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents during the war in Afghanistan.
The revelations became a huge story, drawing reactions from all corners of the world, and led to intense scrutiny of US involvement in foreign conflicts.

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The Northern Mariana Islands, where Mr Assange’s plea deal is expected to be made official, are a remote Pacific archipelago and a US commonwealth. It is much closer to Australia than to US federal courts in Hawaii or the continental United States.
In exchange for pleading guilty to a single charge under the Espionage Act, Mr Assange will serve no time in US custody and will receive credit for time served in prison in Britain.
He will eventually return to Australia, according to a letter from the US Department of Justice.

In a post on X, WikiLeaks said Mr Assange was released from London’s Belmarsh prison on Monday after 1,901 days in a small cell.
Video shared by the website showed Mr Assange, dressed in jeans and a blue shirt, being escorted to London’s Stansted Airport before boarding a plane. Later, his photo was also inside the plane.
Commenting on the footage, his brother Gabriel said it was almost time for Mr Assange’s followers to “drink and celebrate”.

Stella Assange thanked Mr Assange’s supporters for their support, and told BBC Radio 4 she was delighted a deal had been reached.
She said the previous days had been “touch and go” and “non-stop” and she was feeling a “whirlwind of emotions”.

Mrs Assange said she was very limited in what she could say about the deal ahead of her husband’s court appearance. “I don’t want to risk anything,” she told the Today program.
She said her husband’s priorities are “getting healthy again,” being in touch with nature, and having “time and privacy” for the family.
Stella also confirmed that the couple’s two young children were with her in Australia. He said he had not yet told them that his father was to be released – only that he was going to visit the family and that there was “a big surprise” waiting for him.

He later told the BBC’s News Hour programme: “We don’t have much time to talk about the future – the first thing is to pay him back $500,000 (£393,715) to the Australian government for the chartered flights. shall be.”
Pictures of the jet used by Mr Assange show its tail number matches the plane used by Taylor Swift in February.

Mr. Assange’s lawyer, Richard Miller, declined to comment on the latest development when contacted by CBS. The BBC has also contacted his US-based lawyer.
Assange’s legal team and wife have long claimed the case against him is politically motivated, and have called on US President Joe Biden to drop the charges.
In April, Mr Biden said he was considering a request to do so from Australia, whose prime minister said the case had “dragged on too long”.

Mrs Assange suggested there had finally been a “breakthrough” after Britain’s High Court considered her husband’s constitutional protections under freedom of the press.
There has been a mixed response. Former Vice President Mike Pence strongly criticized the plea deal, calling it a “miscarriage of justice.” Others welcomed the news, including the United Nations, whose spokesman said the day was “an important step towards definitively solving this case”.

U.S. prosecutors originally wanted to indict the WikiLeaks founder on 18 counts — mostly under the Espionage Act — over the release of classified U.S. military records and diplomatic messages related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He said these endangered lives.
WikiLeaks, which Mr Assange founded in 2006, claims to have published more than 10 million documents.

One of Mr Assange’s most famous associates, US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, was sentenced to 35 years in prison before then-President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017.
During his long-running legal battles, Mr Assange has rarely been seen in public and has reportedly suffered from poor health over the years, including a brief stroke in prison in 2021.