As negotiations to end the long legal dispute between Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, and the United States reached a critical point this spring, prosecutors presented his lawyers with an option so crazy that the person in question thought it sounded like a line from a Monty Python movie.
“Guam or Saipan?”
It was no joke. He had been told that his path to freedom would pass through one of two U.S.-controlled islands in the vast blue expanse of the Pacific.
Mr. Assange, who feared he would be imprisoned for the rest of his life in the United States, had long insisted on one condition of any plea deal: that he never set foot in the country. In return, the U.S. government demanded that Mr. Assange plead guilty to a felony count of violating the Espionage Act, which would require him to appear before a federal judge.
In April, a lawyer working in the Justice Department’s National Security Division broke the deadlock with a cunning solution: What about an American courtroom that wasn’t actually on the American mainland?
Assange, exhausted by five years in a London prison — where he spent 23 hours a day in his cell — soon realized that the deal was the best he had ever been offered. The two sides settled on Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean, 6,000 miles from the west coast of the United States and about 2,200 miles from his native Australia.
The long and strange journey capped a longer and even stranger legal journey that began after Mr. Assange — an ambitious hacker activist who took on the national security and political establishments of the United States — became alternately famous and reviled for revealing state secrets in the United States in the 2010s.
These documents included material about American military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as secret telegrams exchanged between diplomats. During the 2016 presidential campaign, WikiLeaks published thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee, revealing facts that embarrassed the party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
But the negotiations that led to Mr. Assange’s release were surprisingly cordial and effective, because both sides acted out of a mutual desire to end the stalemate that had left Mr. Assange in limbo and left the ministry mired in a protracted extradition battle, according to eight people familiar with the talks.
The calendar was the main catalyst. By late 2023, senior Justice Department officials concluded that Mr. Assange, now 52, had already served a sentence far longer than many people convicted of similar crimes (he had been in prison for 62 months by the time he was released).
Despite being charged with 18 counts under the Espionage Act, and facing up to hundreds of years in prison, Mr Assange, if extradited, tried and convicted, would likely be sentenced to about four years in prison if his sentences were run concurrently, his legal team calculated in a court document.
Department officials were eager to get rid of the thorny, time-consuming case, which had made some prosecutors in the Assange case targets of WikiLeaks supporters. One senior official said Assange’s “fatigue” was another factor in the negotiations.
Moreover, current and former officials said that some officials appointed under President Biden were not entirely comfortable with the Trump administration’s decision to charge Mr. Assange with activities that skirted the line between espionage and lawful disclosure made in the public interest.
A Justice Department spokeswoman had no comment. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland told reporters Thursday that the deal was in the “best interests” of the country.
By early 2024, leaders in Australia, including Kevin Rudd, the ambassador to the United States, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, began pressing their American counterparts to reach a deal — not out of solidarity with Mr. Assange, or in support of him. his actions, but because he spent a lot of time in captivity.
“The Australian government has consistently said that Mr Assange’s case has gone on for too long, and that there is nothing to be gained from his continued imprisonment,” Mr Albanese said. Written on X On the day of his release. “We want to bring him home to Australia.”
On April 11, the fifth anniversary of Mr. Assange’s arrest, President Biden told reporters at the White House that the United States was “considering” Australia’s request to return him to his home country. However, US officials said the White House played no role in resolving the case.
Assange was desperate to return to his homeland. His wife, Stella, told reporters that he suffers from health problems, and Assange has spoken openly over the years about his severe bouts of depression. Even if he had been healthy, the price of spending nearly 14 years imprisoned in London would have been an enormous burden. He first lived in exile inside the Ecuadorian embassy, in an attempt to evade the Swedish authorities investigating him for sexual assault, and then spent the last five of those years in Belmarsh Prison.
One of Mr. Assange’s lawyers, Jennifer Robinson, He told an Australian TV interviewer She said she believed the Australian pressure campaign, coupled with the recent positive ruling in his extradition case, had created a shift in talks with the Justice Department starting six months ago.
Late last year, Assange’s legal team in Washington, led by attorney Barry Pollack, put forward proposals in which Assange could plead guilty to misdemeanor charges, from a location outside the United States, and be sentenced to time served.
Mr. Pollack also suggested that the government charge WikiLeaks, not its founder, with a felony for obtaining and publishing sensitive intelligence documents that Mr. Assange obtained from Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst, 15 years ago.
The offer appealed to some prosecutors within the department, who were eager for an exit ramp. But after a short period of internal discussions, senior officials rejected that approach, and crafted a somewhat tougher counteroffer: Mr. Assange would plead to one felony charge of conspiring to obtain and disseminate national defense information, a more serious crime involving his interactions with Ms. Manning. .
Free speech groups believe the agreement represents a setback for press freedom, but Mr. Assange appears to have no problem, in theory, admitting to committing a felony on that basis.
Instead, his initial refusal to plead guilty to a criminal offense stemmed from his reluctance to appear in a US courtroom, for fear of being detained indefinitely or physically assaulted in the US, Ms Robinson said in the television interview.
She added that he made a “rational choice.”
In May, a London court ruled, on narrow grounds, that Mr. Assange could appeal his extradition to the United States. This decision gave him the promise of eventual victory, but left him in indefinite confinement 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 may have “accelerated” the plea deal.
But negotiations to release Mr. Assange appeared to have gone a long way by then. US officials said that the Justice Department presented its plan for Saipan before the ruling was issued.
By June, all that remained was to arrange the complex legal and logistical procedures involved in the transfer.
The Australian government has allocated $520,000 to charter a private plane to transport Mr Assange from London to Saipan, and then back to Australia. Appeal to supporters on social media To raise funds to pay the amount.
Then there was the matter of coordinating his release with British authorities, who quietly held a bail hearing just days before he was due to take off on his flight to freedom on June 24.
Mr Assange had a second crucial demand, which came into play as the saga drew to a close: whatever happened on Saipan, he intended to walk out of court a free man.
Justice Department officials saw little chance that the judge in the case, Ramona V. Manglona, would invalidate the deal, so they agreed, as part of earlier negotiations, to let him leave for Australia even if she rejected the deal.
It wasn’t a problem. Judge Manglona accepted the deal without complaint, wishing him “peace” and a happy birthday on July 3, when he would be 53.
Mr. Assange has made a modest final protest – within the constraints imposed on him by the terms of the agreement.
He told the court he believed he was “acting as a journalist” when he was dealing with Ms Manning – but added he now accepted his actions were a “violation” of US law.
Matthew McKenzie, one of the lead prosecutors in the case, agreed that he disagreed with that view.
“We reject these sentiments, but we accept that he believes in them,” he replied.
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