After agreeing to a plead guilty to violating US spy law, Stella Assange, the woman of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, told Reuters on Tuesday that they would get a pardon, putting an end to his long-running legal story in Britain.
Assange, 52, will enter a plea deal on a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and release classified US national defense documents. He is expected to receive a sentence of 62 months in prison already served at a hearing in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands.
He will then be free to return home to Australia.
Stella Assange, a lawyer who has been assisting his campaign almost since the start of his legal battles, claimed she was pleased with the decision but still felt bad that he had been detained for so long.
He was incarcerated in the Ecuadorean embassy in London while the couple got married while he was in Belmarsh maximum security prison there. They had two children while he was there.
She stated that they would seek pardon because journalists around the world are “very concerned” about the acceptance of guilt over an espionage charge. She added that they would launch a fundraising campaign because the cost of a flight from London to Saipan for a court hearing and then to Australia would be about half a million US dollars.
Journalists and national security journalists in general are obviously very concerned about the fact that there is a guilty plea under the Espionage Act in relation to obtaining and disclosing information, she said.
ELATED, WORRIED AND ANGRY
Stella Assange said she had always anticipated this would happen, but that she would hold off until he arrived in Australia, where he is scheduled to arrive on Wednesday. She claimed on Tuesday morning that she had not yet informed their children of the news.
” I feel elated. I also feel worried, you know, because I’m so used to this. Anything could happen. I’m worried that until it’s fully signed off, I worry, but it looks like we’ve got there”, she said, speaking from Sydney.
” I’ll really believe it when I have him in front of me and I can take him and hug him,” he says.
Following WikiLeaks ‘ massive release of secret US documents, the largest security breach of its kind in US military history, Assange has spent more than five years in a British high-security jail and seven are huddled up inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London as a result of the deal.
As the agreement got closer, Stella said, Julian had become” so much lighter,” and they would likely spend time in Australia now, she claimed, a good place to recover your health and sanity.
” I think that goes not just for Julian, but also for me,” she said. ” It’s been a rough, very rough few years and we need some time”.
First, she said they needed to raise money.
He will be in debt when he arrives in Canberra because of Australian policy that he will have to pay for his own return flight and that he will also be required to charter a flight.
We’re going to set up an emergency fund to try to get this money so we can reimburse the Australian government for his release.
” It’s half a million US dollars”.
