Julian Assange walks free: WikiLeaks founder boards plane out of UK after agreeing plea deal

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange flew out of the UK on Monday apparently a free man after reaching a plea deal with US authorities over spy charges that have dogged him for more than a decade. In the coming hours, Assange, 52, is expected to plead guilty to a single espionage charge in a court appearance on a tiny US-controlled Pacific island and prosecutors will seek a sentence equivalent to time served. WikiLeaks published footage of Assange being driven from Belmarsh jail in London, where he has been detained for five years, to Stansted Airport. He then boarded a private jet that landed in Bangkok, Thailand to refuel. Assange has been a wanted man since 2010 when WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents on Washington's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history - along with swathes of diplomatic cables. In 2012, as authorities circled him for that and over 'credible and reliable' sex crime allegations from a woman in Sweden, he fled into London's Ecuadorian embassy where he remained for seven years in often farcical circumstances. After falling out with the South American nation's rulers he was dragged out of his bolthole in 2019 and locked up in Belmarsh while the US attempted to extradite him. But that legal process ended abruptly yesterday, and WikiLeaks broke the news with a post on X reading: 'Julian Assange is free!' In a pre-recorded video filmed outside Belmarsh prison, Assange's wife Stella and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said: 'If you're seeing this, it means he is out.' #assange #Julianassange #wikileaks Daily Mail Homepage: www.dailymail.co.uk/ Daily Mail Facebook: facebook.com/dailymail Daily Mail IG: instagram.com/dailymail Daily Mail Snap: www.snapchat.com/discover/Daily-Mail/8392137033 Daily Mail Twitter: twitter.com/MailOnline Daily Mail Pinterest: pinterest.co.uk/dailymail Julian Assange walks free: WikiLeaks founder boards plane out of UK after agreeing plea deal Get the free Daily Mail mobile app: dailymail.co.uk/mobile

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