As negotiations to end the long legal battle between Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, and the United States reached a climax this spring, prosecutors gave his lawyers an option. The choice was so crazy that one person involved thought it sounded like a line from a Monty Python movie.
“Guam or Saipan?”
That’s no joke. He was told that his path to freedom would pass through one of two American-held islands in the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean.
Mr. Assange, who fears being imprisoned for the rest of his life in the United States, has long insisted on a condition for any plea deal: that he never set foot in the country. The US government, in turn, has asked Mr. Assange to plead guilty to a felony charge of violating the Espionage Act, which would require him to appear before a federal judge.
In April, a lawyer with the Justice Department’s national security division broke the deadlock with a sly workaround: What about an American courtroom that isn’t actually located in the continental United States? ?
Mr. Assange, exhausted by five years in a London prison — where he spent 23 hours a day in his cell — quickly realized that the deal was the best he had ever been offered. The two settled in Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific, 6,000 miles from the U.S. West Coast and about 2,200 miles from his native Australia. (Guam is a little closer to home than Saipan.)
This long and strange journey has capped an even longer and stranger legal journey that began after Mr. Assange — an ambitious hacker activist who took on US political and national security agencies — was alternately celebrated and criticized for revealing state secrets in the 2010s.
The documents include about US military operations in Iraq And Afghanistanas Secret cables shared among diplomats. During the 2016 presidential campaign, WikiLeaks released thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee, leading to revelations that embarrass the whole party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Yet the negotiations that led to Mr. Assange’s release were surprisingly friendly and productive, as both sides acted on a shared desire to end the impasse that had left Mr. Assange in limbo and the department mired in a protracted extradition battle, according to eight people familiar with the negotiations.
The calendar was a major catalyst. By the end of 2023, senior Justice Department officials had concluded that Mr. Assange, now 52, had served a significantly longer sentence than many people convicted of similar crimes had (he had served 62 months at the time of his conviction).
Although he has been charged with 18 crimes under the Espionage Act and faces up to hundreds of years in prison, Mr. Assange, if extradited, tried and convicted, will most likely be sentenced to approximately 4 years if his sentences are stacked. , his legal team calculated in a court document.
Department officials are eager to move on from the messy, time-consuming case, which has made some Assange prosecutors targets of WikiLeaks supporters. Another factor in the negotiations is “Assange fatigue,” a senior official said.
Moreover, some officials appointed under President Biden were never entirely comfortable with the Trump administration’s decision to charge Mr. Assange with activities that crossed the line between espionage and legitimate disclosure in the public interest, current and former officials said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice had no comment. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland told reporters on Thursday that the agreement serves the “best interests” of the country.
By early 2024, leaders in Australia, including Kevin Rudd, the ambassador to the United States, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, began to pressure their American counterparts to reach a deal — not out of solidarity with Mr. Assange or support for his actions, but because he had spent so much time in detention.
“The Australian government has consistently said that Mr Assange’s case has dragged on for too long and that there is no benefit to continuing to detain him,” Mr Albanese said. wrote on X on the day he was released. “We want him brought back to Australia.”
On April 11, the fifth anniversary of Mr. Assange’s detention, President Biden told reporters at the White House that the United States was “looking at” Australia’s request to bring him home. However, U.S. officials said the White House had no role in resolving the case.
Mr. Assange longs to go home. His wife Stella told reporters he was having health problems and Mr. Assange had spoken frankly for years about his severe bouts of depression. Even if he had been in perfect health, the effects of nearly 14 years of imprisonment in London would have been enormously stressful. He lived first in exile inside the Ecuadorian Embassy, in an attempt to evade Swedish authorities investigating him for sexual assault, and then five years later in Belmarsh Prison.
One of Mr Assange’s lawyers, Jennifer Robinson, told an Australian television interviewer She believes Australia’s pressure campaign, coupled with the recent positive ruling in his extradition case, has brought about a change in negotiations with the Department of Justice that began six months ago.
Late last year, Mr. Assange’s Washington-based legal team, led by trial lawyer Barry Pollack, filed proposals in which Mr. Assange would plead guilty to misdemeanor charges, from a location outside the United States, and be sentenced to time served.
Mr. Pollack also proposed that the government charge WikiLeaks, not its founder, with taking and disseminating sensitive intelligence documents that Mr. Assange obtained from Chelsea Manning, a former United States Army intelligence analyst. Period 15 years ago.
The proposal appealed to some prosecutors in the department who were eager for a way out. But after a brief internal discussion, senior officials rejected that approach, drafting a tougher counterargument: Mr. Assange would plead guilty to a single felony charge, conspiracy to collect and disseminate national defense information, a more serious charge that covered his interactions with Ms. Manning.
Free speech groups believe the deal is a step backward for press freedom, but conceptually Mr Assange seems to have no problem pleading guilty on that basis.
Instead, Ms. Robinson said in a television interview that the reason he initially refused to plead guilty to the felony charge was because he did not want to appear in court in the United States for fear of being detained indefinitely or being attacked. physically in the United States.
She made “a rational choice,” she added.
In May, a London court ruled, on narrow grounds, that Mr. Assange may appeal his extradition. to the United States. That decision offered him the promise of eventual victory, but left him indefinitely imprisoned until then.
Nick Vamos, former head of extradition at the Crown Prosecution Service, which is responsible for prosecuting criminal cases in England and Wales, believes the ruling may have “triggered” the push quickly agreed to plead guilty.
But negotiations to release Mr. Assange appeared to be going well at the time. US officials said the Justice Department introduced the Saipan plan before the ruling.
By June, all that remained was to sort out the complicated shipping logistics and legal issues.
The Australian government has spent the $520,000 needed to charter a private jet to fly Mr Assange from London to Saipan and back home. His team is Call on supporters on social media to mobilize community resources for refunds.
Then there was the matter of coordinating his release with British authorities, who quietly convened a bail hearing days before he was scheduled to board a flight to freedom on June 24.
Mr. Assange had a second, more pointed demand, which emerged as the story neared its conclusion: No matter what happened in Saipan, he wanted to walk out of the courtroom a free man.
Justice Department officials see little likelihood that the judge in the case, Ramona V. Manglona, will overturn the deal. So they agreed, as part of previous negotiations, to allow him to come to Australia even if she rejected the deal.
That’s not a problem. Judge Manglona accepted the deal without complaint, and wished him “peace” and a happy birthday on July 3, when he turns 53.
Mr Assange has made one final, modest objection – within the constraints imposed on him by the terms of the agreement.
He told the court he believed he was “working as a journalist” when he came into contact with Ms Manning – but added that he now accepts his actions were “in breach” of US law.
Matthew McKenzie, one of the lead prosecutors in the case, agreed to dissent.
“We reject those sentiments, but accept that he believes them,” he replied.
