LONDON (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Monday left a British prison and will appear later this week in the U.S. federal court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific.
In a deal with the U.S. Justice Department, Assange will plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information, the agency said in a letter filed in court. This will allow him to walk free and resolve a long-running legal saga that spanned multiple continents and centered on the publication of a trove of classified documents.
He had been in custody in a high-security London prison since 2019, and previously spent seven years in self-exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
Here is a look at key events in the long-running legal saga: — 2006: Assange founded WikiLeaks in Australia. The group begins publishing sensitive or classified documents.
— 2010: In a series of posts, WikiLeaks releases almost half a million documents relating to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
— August 2010: Swedish prosecutors issue an arrest warrant for Assange based on one woman’s allegation of rape and another’s allegation of molestation. The warrant is withdrawn shortly afterward, with prosecutors citing insufficient evidence for the rape allegation. Assange denies the allegations.
— September 2010: Sweden’s director of prosecutions reopens the rape investigation. Assange leaves Sweden for Britain.
— November 2010: Swedish police issue an international arrest warrant for Assange.
— December 2010: Assange surrenders to police in London and is detained pending an extradition hearing. The High Court grants Assange bail.
— February 2011: A district court in Britain rules Assange should be extradited to Sweden.
— June 2012: Assange enters the Ecuadorian Embassy in central London, seeking asylum, after his bids to appeal the extradition ruling fail. Police set up an around-the-clock guard to arrest him if he steps outside.
— August 2012: Assange is granted political asylum by Ecuador.
— July 2014: Assange loses his bid to have an arrest warrant issued in Sweden against him canceled. A judge in Stockholm upholds the warrant alleging sexual offenses against two women.
— March 2015: Swedish prosecutors ask to question Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy.
— August 2015: Swedish prosecutors drop investigations…