So good to hear that after being deprived of his freedom for 14 years Julian Assange is finally free and which is such a huge win for truth and accountability. It serves to remind me that we should never give up and the fact is he wasn’t imprisoned for his own crimes, but for exposing US war crimes and human rights abuses in the Middle East and beyond.
One of the many things Julian Assange was persecuted for was revealing that the US military held children as young as 13 in Guantanamo Bay. One of the teenagers the US held there, Talal Zahrani, was later found dead in his cell.
Julian is flying to a Pacific island for a court hearing after agreeing a US plea deal that will see him plead guilty to a criminal charge and go free. The WikiLeaks founder was granted bail by the High Court and released from Belmarsh Prison on Monday following negotiations with US authorities. Court papers filed by the US Justice Department show Assange is scheduled to appear in federal court to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defence information.
He will return to his home country of Australia after his plea and sentencing, scheduled for Wednesday morning local time in the Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth in the Western Pacific. A chartered plane carrying Assange left Stansted Airport on Monday before landing at a Bangkok airport for refuelling at around noon local time (6am BST) on Tuesday.
His wife Stella Assange told the PA news agency he is paying $500,000 for the flight to Australia. His father John Shipton said his freedom had “lifted a huge burden” from his family. In a statement posted on X, the official WikiLeaks account said Assange left the maximum security prison on Monday “after having spent 1901 days there”.
The statement continued: “He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK. “This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations.
“This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised.” Video posted to X by WikiLeaks showed Assange, seated and dressed casually in jeans and a shirt, discussing the text on a sheet of paper. He is then shown walking up steps onto a Vista Jet aircraft.
Julian spent the $500k for his flight out of the UK to avoid landing on the American homeland after he was released from prison. Assange will instead be landing on a remote U.S. island where he will plead guilty to the charges. The island is the U.S. territory of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, about 1,800 miles from Australia.
“He has to front up to charges that have been brought under U.S. law," said a professor at the University of Sydney's law school. Assange will have the U.S. federal court hearing on Wednesday morning on the remote island.
Julians s immense sacrifice was for all of us who care about truth and freedom and an end to wars. Julian exposed the crimes of the powerful. His incarceration and persecution was, and always will be a grotesque miscarriage of justice.Since his arrest Assange which has overshadowed his life for 14 years, including seven in the Ecuadorian embassy and five in solitary confinement in HMP Belmarsh. for the ‘crime’ of being a proper journalist, exposing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. and was deliberately exposed to inhuman and degrading treatment that could be described as psychological torture.
Assange’s alleged crimes dated back to 2010, when the organization he founded, WikiLeaks, transmitted documents to media outlets including Le Monde, The Guardian and The New York Times. WikiLeaks published material about many countries, but it was the US, during the administration of former President Donald Trump, that decided to charge Julian in 2019 with 17 counts of breaching the Espionage Act.
US lawyers had argued he conspired with whusrleblower Chelsea Manning, a former army intelligence analyst, who spent seven years in prison for leaking material to WikiLeaks. She was freed when President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017.
The documents, which were provided to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning, included 250,000 US diplomatic cables and US army reports about military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and exposed cases of torture, abduction and disappearances. The publication of these documents by media outlets was clearly in the public interest, and not an act of espionage. Julian shoumd never have been charhed in the first place.
Among the many Wikileaks revelations was the Collateral Murder footage from Iraq, in which a US Apache helicopter opens fire. Reuters journalists Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen were gunned down, several others were killed while the US pilots laughed.
The shocking thing is that when this footage came out, shooting at civilians was shocking and horrifying to the world. Israel has been doing this with impunity for the last 8 months with US backing, nothing's changed the footage is everywhere on social media yet the mainstream media is silent on genocide.
We wait for a comment on the freedom of Julian Assange from the coward Keir Starmer who as leader of the CPS at the time, tried every trick in the book to deny Assange his freedom. We won't hold our breath. Never forget either that the Guardian and Observer were the key media assets mobilised in the information war against Julian Assange. They profited from his bravery then threw him to the wolves. Never forget. They are the liberal wing of the British establishment.
Julian is owed a lifetime of repayment for every ghastly hour he spent unjustly persecuted and sequestered.His immense sacrifice was for all of us who care about truth and freedom and an end to wars.Twenty years ago, George Bush and Tony Blair brazenly launched an illegal war in Iraq, leading to the senseless slaughter of a million innocent lives. Julian Assange courageously exposed their heinous war crimes.
Thanks to all for working so hard, for fighting relentlessly for this great man's freedom. Thank you for never giving up on him and reuniting him with his family. The world has just become a little brighter. For all those who care about freedom of speech now is the time to celebrate, Thank you Julian, for your enormous sacrifice. We honor you, we love you. Now let's arrest the real war criminals!
URGENT: Emergency appeal for donations to cover massive USD 520,000 debt for jet.
Every contribution counts.
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love" - Julian Assange
“If wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth.” —Julian Assange
