Julian Assange, the founder of the non-profit media organization and publisher of leaked documents WikiLeaks, has been released from a United Kingdom prison after five years of staying behind bars.
According to a tweet from the official WikiLeaks account, a high court in London granted Assange bail. The authorities released him at the Stansted airport on Monday afternoon, where he boarded a plane and left the UK.
Assange Freed From Jail
Due to his plea deal with the United States Justice Department, Assange will no longer be extradited to the country. Although the agreement is yet to be formally concluded, the WikiLeaks founder has agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose U.S. national defense information and will most likely be sentenced to the five years and three months already served in London’s Belmarsh Prison.
Assange’s troubles began in 2010 when he published roughly 700,000 classified U.S. military documents on Washington’s wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. Leaked by former U.S. military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, the documents contained swaths of diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts, including killings that took place in Iraq.
While Assange fled to London’s Ecuador embassy in 2010 to avoid contact with Swedish authorities over sexual misconduct allegations, which were later dropped, the U.S. sought his arrest. Traditional payment giants like PayPal closed WikiLeaks’ account, which the company used to raise funds for its founder’s legal fees.
Assange turned to Bitcoin to raise funds, despite its pseudonymous founder, Satoshi Nakamoto’s protests, and was eventually pulled out of the Ecuador embassy in 2019. Since Assange was jailed in Belmarsh for skipping bail, he has remained there fighting extradition to the U.S. until yesterday.
Millions of Dollars Raised in Crypto
The WikiLeaks founder’s arrest riled up press freedom advocates, who argued and protested that the actions taken against him threatened free speech. The protests led to the creation of the AssangeDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization geared toward restoring Assange’s freedom. The DAO raised millions of dollars in ether from thousands of users.
Evidently, the efforts of the DAO and several freedom advocates have paid off as Assange has been freed from jail. He is due to be sentenced on the island of Saipan by 11:00 pm UTC on June 25, which is 9:00 am Chamorro Standard Time on June 26.
“As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom. Julian’s freedom is our freedom,” said WikiLeaks.
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