WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was sentenced on June 25 in a compromise plea deal by a court in Saipan, the Northern Mariana Islands. Assange pled guilty in a case brought by the Trump administration to leaking classified US military documents, but will not face prison time and instead return home to Australia.
The court’s decision finally puts an end to a legal saga spanning fourteen years in which Assange struggled against Swedish, British, and American authorities. In 2010, Swedish officials issued an arrest warrant for Assange based on accusations of sexual assault. Assange was arrested in the United Kingdom, but in 2012 broke bail and took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for the next seven years. In 2019, the Ecuadorean government granted permission for the United Kingdom to enter the embassy and arrest Assange. The United States then launched a bid for Assange to be extradited to America to stand trial for publishing US military secrets. After five years of legal disputes working through British courts, Assange has finally arrived in the United States, but in the territories as opposed to the fifty states.
Assange’s plea deal is a compromise that leaves neither his supporters nor detractors fully happy. On one hand, his guilty plea is an admission that he did leak classified information and that doing so was a crime, which according to supporters, threatens to criminalize investigative journalism and deny the public information they have a right to hear. In the eyes of his detractors, however, Assange is a criminal whose actions threatened American military security. Letting him walk free, then, shows would-be followers that they can imitate his actions without consequence. The hearing took place in Saipan, the largest island in the Northern Mariana Islands, a territory of the United States. Its location was a concession to Assange from the US Department of Justice, as Assange was unwilling to go to the continental United States and the Northern Marianas are close to Australia, where he will return after the deal.
