Wikileaks said its founder had left a UK prison after striking a deal to plead guilty to US criminal charges.
After a years-long legal saga, Wikileaks says that founder Julian Assange has left the UK after reaching a deal with US authorities that will see him plead guilty to criminal charges and go free.For years, the US has argued that the Wikileaks files - which disclosed information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - endangered lives.
He was then "released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK" to return to Australia, the statement added. The remote Pacific islands, a US commonwealth, are much closer to Australia than US federal courts in Hawaii or the continental US. In a victory the following month, the UK High Court ruled that Assange could bring a new appeal against extradition to the US, allowing him to challenge US assurances over how his prospective trial would be conducted and whether his right to free speech would be infringed.
Wikileaks, which Assange founded in 2006, claims to have published over 10 million documents in what the US government later described as "one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States".
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