Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, will plead guilty to espionage in the US, enabling his return to Australia and ending his imprisonment in Britain. Under the agreement, Assange, 52, will plead guilty to one count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defense documents. He is to be sentenced to 62 months in prison, which he has already served in a British prison. The court session is scheduled for 23:00 GMT on Tuesday (02:00 Wednesday Bulgarian time) on the island of Saipan, as reported by BTA.

This resolution will conclude Assange's prolonged legal battles. In 2010, WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents pertaining to wars in Afghanistan and Iran, marking the largest leak in US military history. WikiLeaks also released a significant number of diplomatic documents.

An Australian government spokesman reiterated Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's stance that Assange's case has been protracted excessively and that no further benefit would come from his continued imprisonment.

Assange was arrested in Britain in 2010 under a European arrest warrant after Swedish authorities sought to question him over sex-offense charges that were later dropped. To avoid extradition to Sweden, he sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in Britain, where he stayed for seven years. In 2019, he was forcibly removed from the embassy and imprisoned. Since then, he has been in Belmarsh Prison in London, fighting extradition to the US for almost five years.

WikiLeaks reported that Assange was released from a British prison and has left the UK by plane.