Flight with Julian Assange takes off from Bangkok towards the Northern Mariana Islands | world

An agreement with the American court led to the release of Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, from prison on Monday (24). He is accused of leaking thousands of secret documents from the United States and has been imprisoned in the United Kingdom since 2019.

Once he arrives in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean, he will present himself to American justice.

As part of the agreement, This week, Assange will plead guilty to violating the US Espionage ActAccording to a document issued by the American courts. He will face a criminal charge – of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defense documents – at a hearing in the Northern Mariana Islands at 8 p.m.

At the hearing, the WikiLeaks founder is expected to be sentenced to 62 months in prison, time he has already served in the UK. After pleading guilty and passing the hearing, Assange will be officially released and is expected to return to Australiathe country of which he is a citizen.

Julian Assange became internationally known for founding an activist group called WikiLeaks in 2006. In the following years, the organization leaked about 700,000 secret documents from the United States, angering the American authorities.

As a result, Assange faced several charges and spent seven years seeking asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, before he was arrested. He will be officially released after years of legal battles and an agreement with the United States.

If extradited to the United States, he could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison.