Julian Assange‘s flight from Bangkok to a US-controlled Pacific Island has taken off – as the WikiLeaks founder prepares to plead guilty to a single spy charge in return for his freedom after 14 years.
Assange, 52, was released from Belmarsh Prison in London on Monday after reaching a plea deal with the US authorities.
The Wikileaks founder arrived in the Thai capital early Tuesday where he departed the plane and was driven away.
He was driven to Stansted Airport yesterday, where he boarded a private jet that ‘left the jurisdiction of England and Wales at 6.36pm’ and landed in Bangkok, Thailand, on Tuesday morning.
His flight, under the call sign, VJT199 left Bangkok around 9:20pm local time, bound for Saipan, part of the US-controlled Northern Mariana Islands in the south Pacific.
His wife, Stella Assange, asked supporters to follow along with Assange’s flight on ‘in case something goes wrong.’
In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today show presenter Mishal Husain, Stella said that she and the couple’s two sons have traveled to Australia in preparation for her husband’s arrival.
‘All I told them was that there was a big surprise and the morning that we left I told them we were heading to the airport. We got on the plane and I told them that we were going to visit our family, their cousin, their grandfather and so on. And they still don’t know.’
‘We’ve been very careful because, obviously, no one can stop a five and a seven-year-old from, you know, shouting it from the rooftops at any given moment.’
‘And because of the sensitivity around the judge having to sign off the deal, we’ve been careful, just gradually, incrementally telling them information.’
‘They’re excited to be in Australia though,’ she added.’
Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, has said that the former hacker will possibly live in the ‘Australian brush.’
Meanwhile his father, John, said: ‘Julian will be able to enjoy an ordinary life with his family and his wife.’
The life Assange plans to lead after his release is unclear – but he is expected to spend a significant amount of time recuperating from a five-year-stint in Belmarsh, where is health is said to have suffered considerably.
He will also undoubtedly dedicate much of his time to his family.
Since Assange was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in 2019, Stella has lived in the London-area, fighting various extradition warrants. She says that she was given 24 hours notice that her husband was being released.
‘He will be a free man once it is signed off by a judge,’ she said, adding that she still didn’t think it was real.
She told Britain’s PA news agency that the flight was costing Assange $500,000 and they would start a fundraising campaign to help pay for it because he was forbidden from traveling on commercial aircraft.
It later emerged that the flight was paid for by the Australian government at a cost of $520,000, with the understanding being that money will be raised to pay them back.
Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, said the deal for Assange came about after the growing involvement of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
‘This is the result of a long, long process which has been going on for some time. It has been a tough battle, but the focus now is on Julian being reunited with his family,’ Hrafnsson told the PA news agency.
In a statement posted on the social media platform X, WikiLeaks said Assange boarded a plane after leaving the high-security London prison where he has spent the last five years.
WikiLeaks applauded the announcement of the deal, saying it was grateful for ‘all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.’
Albanese told Parliament that an Australian envoy had flown with Assange from London.
‘Regardless of the views that people have about Mr. Assange’s activities, the case has dragged on for too long,’ Albanese said. ‘There’s nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia.’
The deal ensures that Assange will admit guilt while also sparing him additional prison time.
He is expected to be sentenced to the five years he has already spent in the British prison while fighting extradition to the U.S. to face charges, a process that has played out in a series of hearings in London.
Last month, he won the right to appeal an extradition order after his lawyers argued that the U.S. government provided ‘blatantly inadequate’ assurances that he would have the same free speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from Britain.
Assange has been heralded by many around the world as a hero who brought to light military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.
But his reputation was also tarnished by the rape allegations, which he has denied.
The Justice Department’s indictment unsealed in 2019 accused Assange of encouraging and helping U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks published in 2010.
Prosecutors had accused Assange of damaging national security by publishing documents that harmed the U.S. and its allies and aided its adversaries.
The case was lambasted by press advocates and Assange supporters.
Federal prosecutors defended it as targeting conduct that went way beyond that of a journalist gathering information, amounting to an attempt to solicit, steal and indiscriminately publish classified government documents.
The plea agreement comes months after President Joe Biden said he was considering a request from Australia to drop the U.S. push to prosecute Assange.
The White House was not involved in the decision to resolve Assange’s case, according to a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Assange made headlines again in 2016 after his website published Democratic emails that prosecutors say were stolen by Russian intelligence operatives.
He was never charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, but the inquiry laid bare in stark detail the role that the hacking operation played in interfering in that year’s election on behalf of then-Republican candidate Donald Trump.
During the Obama administration, Justice Department officials mulled charges for Assange but were unsure a case would hold up in court and were concerned it could be hard to justify prosecuting him for acts similar to those of a conventional journalist.
The posture changed in the Trump administration, however, with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017 calling Assange’s arrest a priority.
Assange’s family and supporters have said his physical and mental health have suffered during more than a decade of legal battles.
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 Ecuador’s government withdrew his asylum status in 2019 and then jailed for skipping bail when he first took shelter inside the
Although Sweden eventually dropped its sex crimes investigation because so much time had elapsed, Assange had remained in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison during the extradition battle with the U.S.
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