Quote:Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, agreed to plead guilty on Monday to a single felony count of illegally disseminating national security material in exchange for his release from a British prison, ending his long and bitter standoff with the United States.

Mr. Assange, 52, was granted his request to appear before a federal judge at one of the more remote outposts of the federal judiciary, the courthouse in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, according to a court filing made public late Monday. It was a fitting twist in the case against Mr. Assange, who doggedly opposed extradition to the U.S. mainland.

Barring last-minute snags, the deal would bring to an end a prolonged battle that began after Mr. Assange became alternately celebrated and reviled for revealing state secrets in the 2010s.

(06-24-2024, 08:29 PM)Nerb Wrote: Yes, about time.

I hope he gets to enjoy a peaceful life and only talk about what he wants to without being hounded, maybe even disappear as soon as he is free and write a book to pay for that time that he can now enjoy.

I'd like to think that he will be well protected once released.

It's been toooo long.

(06-24-2024, 08:29 PM)Nerb Wrote: Yes, about time.

I hope he gets to enjoy a peaceful life and only talk about what he wants to without being hounded, maybe even disappear as soon as he is free and write a book to pay for that time that he can now enjoy.

I'd like to think that he will be well protected once released.

It's been toooo long.

(06-24-2024, 08:50 PM)Maxmars Wrote: In the human world, freedom is never free.

I hope he can recover his health and vitality, long sacrificed to spite.

1. Wikileaks curation of the information released was reckless with respect to releasing personal information, especially of unrelated parties.  This was careless in the extreme and endangered a whole lot more people than the perpetrators of all of the illegal activities.  In fact, in many cases the released information actually endangered the victims more than the perpetrators of the acts against them.  This, in my opinion, is a pretty serious offense.
   
2. Additionally, it's one thing to obtain and release proof of nefarious and illegal activity in the spirit of "transparency".  But it's a whole other thing to attempt to 'steer' the narrative by selectively releasing pieces of information such that it works to shape public perception in line with a political agenda, regardless of what that agenda is.  Now, it would seem that much of the political damage was done to the democrats (and gawd knows how I feel about them and their crazy antics), so republicans were the majority benefactor in this regard, but this doesn't make it any less wrong.
   

(06-25-2024, 06:39 AM)OneStepBack Wrote: I am so glad this has happened. I am ashamed to be British when we allow someone to remain in jail for so long without charge. Especially so when we are seeing violent recidivists being given suspended sentences because the jails are supposedly full.

Quote:CIA officials under Trump discussed assassinating Julian Assange – report
This article is more than 2 years old
Mike Pompeo and officials requested ‘options’ for killing Assange following WikiLeaks’ publication of CIA hacking tools, report says


Senior CIA officials during the Trump administration discussed abducting and even assassinating WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, according to a US report citing former officials.

The discussions on kidnapping or killing Assange took place in 2017, Yahoo News reported, when the fugitive Australian activist was entering his fifth year sheltering in the Ecuadorian embassy. The then CIA director, Mike Pompeo, and his top officials were furious about WikiLeaks’ publication of “Vault 7”, a set of CIA hacking tools, a breach which the agency deemed to be the biggest data loss in its history.

Pompeo and the CIA leadership “were completely detached from reality because they were so embarrassed about Vault 7”, Yahoo cites a former Trump national security official as saying. “They were seeing blood.”

Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration went as far as to request “sketches” or “options” for killing Assange. “There seemed to be no boundaries,” a former senior counterterrorist official was quoted as saying.

The CIA declined to comment.

The kidnapping or murder of a civilian accused of publishing leaked documents, with no connection to terrorism, would have triggered global outrage.

Pompeo raised eyebrows in 2017 by referring to WikiLeaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service”. The Yahoo report said that it was a significant designation, as it implied a green light for a more aggressive approach to the pro-transparency group by CIA operatives, who could treat it as an enemy espionage organization.

Quote:Julian Assange has arrived back in his native Australia after striking a plea deal with a US court to allow him to walk free, bringing an end a 14-year legal battle.

The 52-year-old landed in Canberra on a six-hour flight from the island of Saipan, an American territory in the Pacific, where he was freed after pleading guilty to one charge of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information.

Under the deal, a judge sentenced him to his time already served Belmarsh Prison, where he had spent five years locked up while fighting US attempts to extradite him, and wished him an “early happy birthday” for when he turns 53 next week.

US prosecutors had wanted Assange over accusations he broke the law and put the country’s national security at risk via the WikiLeaks website he founded in 2006. During a three-hour hearing on the US Pacific island territory of Saipan before flying to Australia, Assange pleaded guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified national defence documents but said he had believed the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, which protects free speech, shielded his activities.

(06-25-2024, 04:58 PM)Notran Wrote: Editing: It reminds us what kind of fascists Pompeo, Trump, and their colleagues are. Because they are glorified on FOX News like they are done kind of superheroes.