The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Tuesday welcomed the end of the detention of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in the UK.
“We welcome the release of Julian Assange (…) and the significant progress made towards the final resolution of this case without further arrests,” OHCHR spokeswoman Elisabeth Trossel told French news agency AFP.
Assange was headed to a hearing in US federal court in the Mariana Islands, where he is expected to be released after reaching an agreement with the US court system.
Trossel said Assange’s case “raises a number of human rights issues” and that his “increasingly prolonged” detention was also a concern.
“We will continue to monitor developments in the coming days,” added the spokeswoman in Geneva, Switzerland.
Assange is now accused of “conspiracy to obtain and disseminate information relating to national defense.”
According to US court documents, he is expected to plead guilty to that charge alone and will be sentenced to 62 months in prison – a sentence already served on remand in London.
The decision will allow Assange to return to Australia.
Assange’s wife Stella Assange told Britain’s BBC radio today that the WikiLeaks founder will be a free man once his plea agreement is confirmed by American courts.
“There is an agreement in principle between Julian and the US Department of Justice, which must be approved by a judge in the Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean,” Stella Assange said.
The 52-year-old Australian “will be a free man once the agreement is confirmed by the judge,” which will happen on Wednesday, he added.
The United States has prosecuted Assange for disclosing, since 2010, more than 700,000 confidential documents about US military and diplomatic activities, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Assange has been detained in Britain since 2019, after seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he took refuge to avoid extradition to Sweden in a case in which he was accused of rape.
WikiLeaks, based in Sweden, was founded in 2006 and has distinguished itself by publishing confidential documents obtained from anonymous sources.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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