Julian Assange is banned from the US after pleading guilty to espionage in exchange for his freedom as DoJ lays out in scathing detail how WikiLeaks founder put innocent lives at risk

Julian Assange has been banned from entering the US indefinitely after pleading guilty to a charge of espionage.

The WikiLeaks founder has just been released without probation or supervision following a hearing in a US federal court on the Pacific island of Saipan.

The US Department of Justice released a lengthy statement detailing Assange’s crimes, announcing the guilty plea and his ban from returning to the country.

“Under the settlement, Assange is prohibited from returning to the United States without authorization,” the report said.

“This guilty plea concludes a criminal case that dates back to March 2018, when Assange was first charged in the Eastern District of Virginia.”

That plea deal with U.S. prosecutors cleared the way for him to return home without fear of arrest after fourteen years as a wanted crime suspect.

Assange had been wanted since 2010 on espionage charges after WikiLeaks released thousands of classified US military documents, and on unrelated rape allegations in Sweden.

He fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London in June 2012 when he lost his appeal against extradition to Sweden, and spent seven years in hiding there until he was expelled and held in a high-security prison since April 2019.

The DoJ explained how Assange conspired with US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to illegally obtain and distribute the documents.

“Beginning in late 2009, Assange and WikiLeaks actively requested classified information from the United States, including by publishing a Most Wanted Leaks list that sought, among other things, bulk classified documents,” the report said.

Assange recruited people with access to classified material, along with hackers who could break into computer systems and steal them.

He publicly encouraged them to obtain classified material “by any means necessary,” including stealing it, and hand it over to him.

Manning was one of these recruits and downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents and reports between January and May 2010.

“Many of them are classified at a classified level and relate to national defense, which meant that unauthorized disclosure could cause serious damage to the national security of the United States,” the DoJ said.

The files include 90,000 war-related activity reports from Afghanistan, 400,000 from Iraq, 800 detainee assessment reports from Joint Task Force Guantanamo, and 250,000 cables from the U.S. Department of State.

Other files were “rules of engagement” for the war in Iraq, which defined the “circumstances and limitations” under which the U.S. military could attack enemy forces.

Assange and Manning communicated regularly online and he urged her to find and send more documents.

When Manning told him ‘that is’ [sic] all I really have left,” he replied, “curious eyes never dry out, in my experience.”

After receiving the files, Assange posted most of them to WikiLeaks: 75,000 Afghan war documents, 400,000 Iraq war documents, 100,000 State Department documents, and all the notes from Guantanamo detainees.

“Unlike news organizations that published redacted versions of some of the classified documents… Assange and WikiLeaks have made many of the raw classified documents public without removing any personally identifiable information,” the DoJ said.

‘In many cases the secret documents… [were] in a raw or unedited form, which placed individuals who had assisted the U.S. government at great personal risk.

“Assange’s decision to reveal the names of human sources that Manning had illegally shared with him created a serious and imminent risk to human life.”

The DoJ said some of the information came from journalists, religious leaders, human rights activists and political dissidents who provided it to the U.S. in confidence “at significant risk to their own safety.”

“By releasing these documents without concealing the names of human sources or other identifying information, Assange exposed these individuals to serious harm and arbitrary detention,” the report said.

The statement said that Assange acknowledged in public statements that he knew this could pose a risk of harm to these people.

Assange and his lawyers argue that no harm was caused by WikiLeaks posting the documents, including in statements after the brief hearing.

Manning was jailed for decades for sending Assange the documents, but her sentence was commuted by then US President Barrack Obama and she walked free after just seven years behind bars.

Assange has been a wanted man since 2010, when the documents were released, the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history.

In June 2012, when authorities surrounded him for this reason and because of ‘credible and reliable’ allegations of sexual crimes against a woman in Sweden, he fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he remained for seven years in often farcical conditions.

Ecuador eventually grew tired of him being there, revoked his asylum and kicked him out – leading to his immediate arrest and imprisonment in Britain while he fought extradition to the US.

After five years of court proceedings, and with Assange nearing the time Manning had spent in prison, the US negotiated a plea deal.

Assange refused to set foot on the US mainland for fear of being arrested, so he instead had to appear in court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean near his native Australia.

Judge Ramona V. Manglona accepted his guilty plea and debated whether to fine Assange up to $150,000, order probation or supervised release.

After consulting with Assange’s lawyer Barry Pollack and US prosecutor Matthew McKenzie, she decided to forego both options and let him go as a free man.

‘You will be able to leave this courtroom a free man. I hope that some peace will be restored,” Manglona stated.

“Given the factual basis that explains the entire saga of events that form the basis for this very serious espionage charge against you … I am essentially sentencing you to a certain amount of time that you have already served,” she said.

“I am not imposing any period of supervised release.”

The judge noted that the island would soon celebrate 80 years of its own freedom.

“Now there is some peace, you have to come to yourself when you walk away and pursue your life as a free man,” she said.

An emotional Assange could barely speak as he said “yes” after being asked if he understood the details of the agreement.

US attorney Matthew McKenzie said at the time that the US would withdraw its extradition request for Assange in Britain.

Assange walked out of the court moments later to loud cheers from his supporters, waved at them but said nothing before getting into a waiting car.

He was driven straight to the airport where he departed on flight VJT199, which departed at 1pm local time on Wednesday.

Assange will land in Canberra, Australia, at 7:39 PM local time, where he will be reunited with his wife Stella and two children.