A desire from all sides to set Assange free

As negotiations to end the long-running legal battle between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the United States reached a critical point this spring, prosecutors presented his lawyers with a choice so absurd that one person involved thought it sounded like a line from a Monty Python movie.

“Guam or Saipan?”

It wasn’t a joke. His path to freedom, he was told, would pass through one of two American-occupied islands in the blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

Mr. Assange, who feared he would spend the rest of his life in prison in the United States, had long insisted on one condition of a plea agreement: that he never set foot in the country. The U.S. government, in turn, had demanded that Mr. Assange plead guilty to a felony charge of violating the Espionage Act, which required him to appear before a federal judge.

In April, a lawyer from the Justice Department’s national security division broke the impasse with a cunning solution: How about a U.S. court that isn’t actually on the U.S. mainland?

Mr. Assange, exhausted by five years of incarceration in a London prison — where he spent 23 hours a day in his cell — soon realized the deal was the best he had ever been offered. The two sides reached an agreement on Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean, 6,000 miles from the US west coast and about 2,200 miles from his native Australia.

This long, strange journey ended an even longer, stranger legal journey that began after Mr. Assange — an ambitious hacker activist who took on America’s national security and political institutions — was alternately celebrated and vilified for exposing state secrets in the 2010s.

This included material on U.S. military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as confidential cables shared among diplomats. During the 2016 presidential campaign, WikiLeaks released thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee, leading to revelations that embarrassed the party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Yet the negotiations leading to Assange’s release were surprisingly amicable and efficient, as both sides acted out of a shared desire to end the standoff that left Assange in limbo and the ministry embroiled in a protracted extradition dispute, according to eight people with knowledge of the negotiations.

The calendar was an important catalyst. In late 2023, senior Justice Department officials concluded that Mr. Assange, now 52, ​​had already served a significantly longer sentence than many people convicted of similar crimes (he served 62 months when released).

Although he had been charged with 18 counts under the Espionage Act and faced hundreds of years in prison, Assange, if extradited, tried and convicted, would most likely have been sentenced to about four years if his sentences had been run concurrently, his legal team calculated in a court document.

Ministry officials were eager to get rid of the difficult, time-consuming case, which had left some of Assange’s accusers targeted by WikiLeaks supporters. A senior official said another factor in the negotiations was “Assange fatigue.”

Moreover, some officials appointed under President Biden were never entirely comfortable with the Trump administration’s decision to charge Assange with activities that crossed the line between espionage and legitimate disclosures in the public interest, current and former officials said.

A Justice Department spokeswoman had no comment. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland told reporters Thursday that the deal served the “best interests” of the country.

In early 2024, leaders in Australia, including Kevin Rudd, the ambassador to the United States, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, began pressuring their American counterparts to reach a deal – not so much out of solidarity with Mr Assange, or support for his actions, but because he had spent so much time in captivity.

“The Australian government has consistently said that Mr Assange’s case has dragged on for too long and that there is nothing to be gained from his continued incarceration,” Mr Albanese said. wrote on X on the day of his release. “We want him brought back to Australia.”

On April 11, the fifth anniversary of Mr. Assange’s capture, President Biden told reporters at the White House that the United States was “considering” Australia’s request to return him to his home. Still, U.S. officials said the White House played no role in resolving the case.

Mr. Assange desperately wanted to go home. He had health problems, his wife Stella told reporters, and Mr. Assange had spoken openly about his bouts of severe depression over the years. Even if he had been in perfect health, the toll of being cooped up in London for almost 14 years was enormous. He first lived as an exile in the Ecuadorian embassy, ​​in an attempt to escape Swedish authorities who were investigating him for sexual abuse, and spent the last five of those years in Belmarsh prison.

One of Assange’s lawyers, Jennifer Robinson, said an Australian TV interviewer she believed the Australian pressure campaign, coupled with a positive recent ruling in his extradition case, had caused a shift in talks with the Justice Department that had begun six months ago.

Late last year, Mr Assange’s Washington-based legal team, led by trial lawyer Barry Pollack, filed motions that would see Mr Assange plead guilty to criminal charges, committed from a location outside the United States, and sentenced to a prison term.

Mr. Pollack also suggested that the government charge WikiLeaks, not its founder, with a crime for obtaining and distributing sensitive intelligence documents that Mr. Assange obtained 15 years ago from Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. military intelligence analyst.

The offer appealed to some prosectors within the department, who wanted a way out. But after a brief period of internal discussions, senior officials rejected that approach and made a somewhat stiffer counteroffer: Mr. Assange would plead to a single felony count, conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defense information, a more serious offense involving his interactions with Mrs. Manning.

Free speech groups believe the deal represents a setback for press freedom, but Mr. Assange appeared to have no problem conceptually with admitting to a crime on those grounds.

Instead, his initial refusal to plead guilty to a crime was rooted in his reluctance to appear in an American courtroom for fear of being detained indefinitely or physically attacked in the United States, Ms. Robinson said in the TV -interview.

He made “a rational choice,” she added.

In May, a London court ruled, on limited grounds, that Mr. Assange could appeal against his extradition to the United States. The decision offered him the promise of ultimate victory but left him in indefinite detention until then.

Nick Vamos, former head of extradition at the Crown Prosecution Service, which is responsible for bringing criminal cases in England and Wales, believes the ruling could have “triggered” an acceleration of the plea deal.

But negotiations for Assange’s release appear to be well advanced by then. The Justice Department had advanced its Saipan plan before the ruling, U.S. officials said.

In June, all that remained was to arrange the complex legal and transport logistics.

The Australian government has forked out the $520,000 needed to charter a private jet to transport Mr. Assange from London to Saipan, and then back home. His team is addressing supporters on social media to crowdsource the refund.

Then there was the matter of coordinating his release with British authorities, who quietly arranged a bail hearing a few days before he was due to depart on his flight to freedom on June 24.

Assange had a second, unwavering demand, which came into play as the story neared its conclusion: whatever happened in Saipan, he planned to leave court a free man.

Justice Department officials saw little chance that the judge in the case, Ramona V. Manglona, ​​would renege on the deal. So, as part of earlier negotiations, they agreed that he would leave for Australia even if she rejected the agreement.

It was no 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 filed one modest final protest, within the constraints imposed on him by the terms of the deal.

He told the court he believed he had been “working as a journalist” when he dealt with Ms Manning – but took pains to add that he now recognized his actions were “a violation” of US law.

Matthew McKenzie, one of the lead prosecutors in the case, disagreed.

“We reject these sentiments, but accept that he believes them,” he replied.