WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, 52, was released from a UK prison on Monday after agreeing to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and release military secrets in the US.
"Julian Assange is free," WikiLeaks announced on Tuesday on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
"He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK," read the WikiLeaks tweet.
Assange's plea agreement was filed in a court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a remote US territory in the Pacific ocean and he will appear over there on Wednesday.
It has been reported that as part of the plea deal Assange is likely to be sentenced to 62 months in prison but will be credited for the five years already served in Britain.
A controversial figure, hailed as a hero by advocates of free speech and a villain by those who believe he gave away state secrets, Assange wore a blue shirt and jeans as he boarded a flight at London's Stansted Airport on June 24.
With that, the curtains seemed to be coming down on Assange's decade-long legal battle after founding WikiLeaks in 2006 and leaving the world stunned with a video released in 2010 of an alleged air strike by US helicopter in Baghdad that left many civilians dead.
Again in the same year, WikiLeaks released thousands of documents reportedly containing classified US military information on the Afghanistan war.
Soon however, he was embroiled in a legal problem after an arrest warrant was issued in Sweden shortly after Assange visited, alleging rape and molestation.
He denied the charges in Stockholm.
Soon after, another lot of documents were released on WikiLeaks, this time on the Iraq war. Later, US diplomatic cables with security threat assessments and inputs on leaders of other nations, sometimes with embarrassing details.
By the end of 2010, an international arrest warrant was issued by Interpol after a court in Sweden approved a detention request on suspicion of the rape and molestation charges.
Assange was extradited to London where a court granted him bail. As the decision was challenged by Sweden he was kept in custody. However, through 2011 and 2012 he fought Sweden's extradition request and as his final appeal was rejected he took refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.
By 2015, the rape and unlawful coercion charges against him were withdrawn due to passing of the legal time limit, and in 2017 the rape charge was also dropped.
However, even though Ecuador had granted Assange "asylum," meaning he was free to stay in the embassy with British police not allowed in as long as he did not venture out, in April 2019 he was arrested after the police were reportedly "invited" in by the Ambassador.
In 2019 Assange was jailed for seeking asylum while out on bail even as Swedish authorities announced they were reopening the rape case - which was dropped again however due to lapse of time.
In the meantime, US requested UK for Assange's extradition to US to face charges of violation of espionage law and hacking government computers.
in 2021, US said it wouild appeal a British judge's ruling against the extradition for fears of Assange taking his own life.
Assange's extradition to the US was approved by the UK government in 2022, which after various appeals by Assange, was put on hold in 2024, after the court sought assurances that he would not face death penalty.
On April 10, 2024, US President Joe Biden announced dropping of charges against Assange after requests from Australia that he be allowed to return to his home country.
On June 24, the deal was revealed in which Assange agreed to plead guilty to one criminal count and be "sentenced to time served."
What happens now will be interesting to watch.
As the WikiLeaks tweet read," WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions. As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles, and for the people's right to know.
"As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.
"Julian's freedom is our freedom."
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