Assange is due to appear in federal court in the Mariana Islands, a U.S. colony in the western Pacific, to plead guilty to an espionage charge of conspiring to illegally obtain and disseminate classified national defense information, according to a letter filed by the Department of justice in court.
The guilty plea, which must be approved by a judge, abruptly ends a criminal international conspiracy case and the U.S. government’s long pursuit of a publisher whose wildly popular secret-sharing website made him a cause célèbre among many press freedom advocates who said , that he acted as a journalist to expose wrongdoing by the US military.
Investigators, on the other hand, have repeatedly said his actions violated laws meant to protect sensitive information and put the country’s national security at risk.
He is expected to return to Australia after his plea and sentencing, which is scheduled for Wednesday morning local time in Saipan, the largest island in the Mariana Islands.
The hearing is being held there because of Assange’s opposition to traveling to the US mainland and the court’s proximity to Australia.
Assange has been hailed by many around the world as a hero for exposing military abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Among the files released by WikiLeaks was video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by US forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.
But his reputation was also tarnished by allegations of rape, which he denied.
A Justice Department indictment unsealed in 2019 accused Assange of encouraging and aiding US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to steal diplomatic cables and military files released by WikiLeaks in 2010.
Prosecutors accused Assange of harming national security by releasing documents that harmed the US and its allies and aided its adversaries.
The case has been criticized by press advocates and Assange supporters.
Federal prosecutors defended it as targeting conduct that went beyond that of a journalist gathering information, amounting to an attempt to solicit, steal and indiscriminately publish classified government documents. It was brought up even though the Obama administration’s Justice Department had pursued it years earlier.
The plea deal comes months after President Joe Biden said he was considering asking Australia to back down from US pressure to prosecute Assange.
Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted of violating the Espionage Act and other crimes for leaking classified government and military documents to WikiLeaks.
President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017, allowing her to be released after about seven stints behind bars.
Assange made headlines in 2016 after his website published Democratic Party emails that prosecutors said were stolen by Russian intelligence agents.
He was never indicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, but the probe revealed in stark detail the role the hacking operation played in interfering in that year’s election on behalf of then-Republican candidate Donald Trump.
Justice Department officials considered charges against Assange after the documents were released in 2010, but were unsure the case would hold up in court and were concerned it might be difficult to justify prosecuting him for actions similar to these of an ordinary journalist.
However, the position has changed under the Trump administration, with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions calling Assange’s arrest a priority in 2017.
Assange’s family and supporters said his physical and mental health had suffered during more than a decade of legal battles, which included seven years spent in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012 and was granted political asylum after courts in England ruled he should be extradited to Sweden as part of a rape investigation in the Scandinavian country.
He was arrested by British police after the Ecuadorian government withdrew his asylum status in 2019 and was then jailed for skipping bail when he first took refuge in the embassy.
Although Sweden eventually dropped its sex crimes investigation because so much time had passed, Assange remained in London’s maximum-security Belmarsh prison during the extradition battle with the US
