The US Department of Justice is considering allowing a Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, to plead guilty to a “reduced” charge relating to the illegal distribution of classified materials, paving the way for the possible conclusion of a 13-year-old legal battle in British courts. Anonymous sources told the Wall Street Journal that the Justice Department and Assange’s lawyers have initiated preliminary contacts over the past few months to discuss a possible settlement. The sources specified that discussions are ongoing, and that any agreement would have to be approved by the department’s top management. Barry Pollack, one of the lawyers of Assange, told the newspaper that at the moment “there are no signs that can confirm the desire for an agreement” on the part of the US federal government.
Sudan: milizie Rsf attaccano drone dell’aeronautica sudanese atterrato a KhartumAssange is awaiting a sentence after the latest appeal hearing in London against his extradition to the United States, after more than 13 years of legal battles, first as an inmate in the Ecuadorian embassy, and then as an inmate of a British maximum security prison. US authorities intend to prosecute the 52-year-old Australian under the Espionage Act for publication by WikiLeaks of numerous confidential documents, the contents of which triggered scandals regarding the actions of the US Forces in Iraq, US espionage activities against allied countries and the regularity of the primaries of the US Democratic Party in 2016. According to the US federal authorities, the publication of the documents would have put the safety of US intelligence personnel at risk. However, Assange is considered by many to be a symbol of freedom of the press and expression, and a journalist persecuted for having exposed alleged war crimes.
The legal battles of Assange began in 2010, when the founder of WikiLeaks was arrested in the United Kingdom for alleged sexual assault on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by a court of Stockholm. As soon as he was granted bail in December of that year, Assange took refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy, claiming that the charges against him were a pretext to extradite him to the United States. The rape charges were soon dropped, but Assange spent the next seven years inside the embassy, before being arrested by British authorities on charges of violating the conditions of the probation he had been granted in 2010. Since then Assange has languished in Britain’s notorious maximum security penitentiary belmarsh. While in prison he married his former lawyer Stella Moris. The British authorities have approved Assange’s extradition to the US in 2022, after a contrary opinion initially expressed by a judge on the basis of the man’s precarious health conditions and the alleged risk of suicide
