The accountability petition, due to be finalized on Wednesday, will get to the bottom of Assange’s extraordinary criminal issues with the US government. CBS News has learned that Justice Division prosecutors recommended a custodial prison sentence of 62 months as part of the plea bargain, on top of the single-count violation. Assange will no longer spend a single day in US custody because, under the plea’s assurances, he will receive credit for the nearly five years he spent in the UK. Jail prevent extradition to America
In a letter to a federal judge on Monday, the Justice Department objected to Assange traveling to the continental US to consider an accountability plea. The Justice Department expects Assange to return to Australia after the court hearing.
Assange, an Australian citizen, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Virginia in 2019 on multiple charges alleging that he illegally published material on his WikiLeaks website about the United States’ wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Received and disseminated classified information from. Prosecutors that day accused him of recruiting people to “hack computers and/or illegally obtain and disclose classified information.”
He is set to plead guilty to charges of conspiracy to obtain and disclose nationwide security data.
His lawyer declined to comment.
One of their most famous recruits, US military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, was convicted of distributing hundreds of thousands of sensitive military information to WikiLeaks in 2010, in what officials said was the largest disclosure of secret government information. Historical past. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison and his sentence was commuted by former President Barack Obama in 2017.
Assange was accused of working with Manning to determine the passwords on a Defense Segment laptop device that stored sensitive information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as well as the debriefings of several Guantanamo Bay detainees.
Federal prosecutors also accused Assange of “publishing the names of individuals around the world who provided information to the U.S. government under circumstances in which they could expect their identities to be kept confidential.”
Assange has so far denied all wrongdoing. He and his supporters argued that charges should never have been filed because he was working as a journalist reporting on government activities.
He has been in British custody since 2019 and spent years on felony attempted murder to resist extradition to the US to pay federal charges. Anticipated accountability plea ends intercontinental court battle.
In May, the WikiLeaks founder launched his bid to appeal his extradition to the US on espionage charges, after a British court requested the US government to ensure that Assange is isolated under the US charter. Pronunciation protection will be provided and he will do so now. The death penalty will not be given if found guilty on espionage charges.
President Biden noted in April that he was “considering” Australia’s request to allow Assange to return to his native country, having asked the US to leave the matter to them.
Assange has faced criminal problems for more than a decade, beginning in 2010 when a Swedish prosecutor issued arrest warrants for two women under charges of rape and sexual assault, which Assange denied. Was. As he faced extradition to Sweden, he sought political asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he lived for seven years until being evicted in 2019.
Swedish prosecutors closed their investigation into Assange in 2017 and the international arrest warrant against him was withdrawn, but he was still wanted by British police because he refused to post bail when he entered the embassy.
In early 2019, Ecuador became angry with its London astronaut, accusing him of smearing his feces on walls and attacking his guards.
Lenin Moreno, who was Ecuador’s president at the time, “exhausted our patience and pushed our tolerance to the limit.” mentioned, Moreno accused Assange of being an “information terrorist” by selectively free data “According to their ideological commitments.”
At the request of the US government, British police arrested Assange at the embassy on April 11, 2019, after Ecuador stopped granting asylum to Assange. According to sources, he was facing similar charges in the US in 2010.
WikiLeaks was a major participant in the 2016 presidential election, publishing thousands of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee that were stolen by Russian government hackers. WikiLeaks and Assange have been discussed in several instances, particularly Robert Mueller’s 448-page record on Russian interference in the 2016 election, even though he was not charged for his 2016 behavior. Was.
Priscilla Saldana contributed reporting.
