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Wikileaks Founder Assange Released From UK Prison, Appears in US Colony Court Wednesday

Published

1 year ago

June 25, 2024

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is to be a “free man”, his wife said Tuesday, once a judge signs off on a plea deal with US authorities to bring his years-long legal drama to a close.

Assange was released Monday from a high-security British prison where he had been held for five years while he fought extradition to the United States, which sought to prosecute him for revealing military secrets.

He flew out of London to travel to the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific where he will plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defence information, according to a court document.

A charter plane carrying the 52-year-old landed in Bangkok around 12:30 pm (0530 GMT) on Tuesday for a scheduled refuelling stop.

From there it was scheduled to fly to Saipan, the capital of the US territory where Assange is due in court on Wednesday morning.

He is expected to be sentenced to five years and two months in prison, with credit for the same amount of time he spent behind bars in Britain.

Assange’s wife Stella said he would be a “free man” after the judge signed off on the deal, thanking supporters who have campaigned for his release for years.

“I’m just elated. Frankly, it’s just incredible,” she told BBC radio.

“We weren’t sure until the last 24 hours that it was happening.”

She urged supporters to monitor her husband’s flight on plane-tracking websites and to follow the “AssangeJet” hashtag, saying in a post on social media platform X “We need all eyes on his flight in case something goes wrong”.

The court in the Northern Mariana Islands was chosen because of Assange’s unwillingness to go to the continental United States and because of the territory’s proximity to his native Australia, a court filing said.

Under the deal, Assange is due to return to Australia, where the government said his case had “dragged on for too long” and there was “nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration”.

WikiLeaks posted a video on X showing Assange looking out of the window as the private jet landed in Bangkok, and then stepping off the plane onto the tarmac.

Assange was wanted by Washington for releasing hundreds of thousands of secret US documents from 2010 as head of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

Since then he has become a hero to free speech campaigners and a villain to those who thought he endangered US security and intelligence sources.

US authorities wanted to put Assange on trial for divulging military secrets about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was indicted by a US federal grand jury in 2019 on 18 counts stemming from WikiLeaks’ publication of a trove of national security documents.

The United Nations hailed Assange’s release, saying the case had raised “a series of human rights concerns”.

“We welcome the release of Julian Assange from detention in the UK,” UN rights office spokeswoman Liz Throssell told AFP in an email.

Assange’s mother Christine Assange said in a statement carried by Australian media that she was “grateful that my son’s ordeal is finally coming to an end”.

But former US Vice President Mike Pence slammed the plea deal on X as a “miscarriage of justice” that “dishonours the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our Armed Forces”.

The announcement of the deal came two weeks before Assanga e was scheduled to appear in court in Britain to appeal against a ruling that approved his extradition to the United States.

Assange has been detained in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London since April 2019.

He was arrested after spending seven years in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced accusations of sexual assault that were eventually dropped.

The material he released through WikiLeaks included video showing civilians being killed by fire from a US helicopter gunship in Iraq in 2007. The victims included a photographer and a driver from Reuters.

The United States accused Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act. Supporters have warned this means he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.

The British government approved his extradition in June 2022 but, in a recent twist, two British judges said in May that he could appeal against the transfer.

The plea deal was not entirely unexpected. US President Joe Biden had been under growing pressure to drop the long-running case against Assange.

The Australian government made an official request to that effect in February and Biden said he would consider it, raising hopes among Assange supporters that his ordeal might end.

AFP

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S’Africa Offers US New Trade Deal To Avoid 30% Tariff

Published

12 hours ago

August 12, 2025

Editor

South Africa will offer a “generous” new trade deal to the United States to avoid 30 percent tariffs, ministers said Tuesday.

Washington on Friday slapped the huge tariff on some South African exports, the highest in sub-Saharan Africa, despite efforts by Pretoria to negotiate a better arrangement to avoid massive job losses.

The ministers did not release details of the new offer but said previously discussed measures to increase imports of US poultry, blueberries, and pork had been finalised.

“When the document is eventually made public, I think you would see it as a very broad, generous and ambitious offer to the United States on trade,” Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen said at a press briefing.

Officials have said the 30 per cent tariff could cost the economy around 30,000 jobs.

“Our goal is to demonstrate that South African exports do not pose a threat to US industries and that our trade relationship is, in fact, complementary,” Trade Minister Parks Tau said.

The United States is South Africa’s third-largest trading partner after the European Union and China.

However, South African exports account for only 0.25 per cent of total US imports and are “therefore not a threat to US production”, Tau said.

Steenhuisen said US diplomats raised issues related to South African domestic policies, which was a “surprise given the fact we thought we were in a trade negotiation”.

The two nations are at odds over a range of policies.

US President Donald Trump has criticised land and employment laws meant to redress racial inequalities that linger 30 years after the end of apartheid.

“Things like expropriation without compensation, things like some of the race laws in the country, are issues that they regard as barriers now to doing trade with South Africa,” he told AFP on the sidelines of the briefing.

“I think we’re seeing some form of a new era now where trade and tariffs are being used to deal with other issues, outside of what would generally be trade concerns,” Steenhuisen said.

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Over 600 Pilgrims Hospitalised After Chlorine Gas Leaked In Iraq

Published

2 days ago

August 10, 2025

Editor

More than 600 pilgrims in Iraq were briefly hospitalised with respiratory problems after inhaling chlorine as the result of a leak at a water treatment station, authorities said on Sunday.

The incident took place overnight on the route between the two Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, located in the centre and south of Iraq, respectively.

This year, several million Shiite Muslim pilgrims are expected to make their way to Karbala, which houses the shrines of the revered Imam Hussein and his brother Abbas.

There, they will mark the Arbaeen — the 40-day period of mourning during which Shiites commemorate the death of Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.

In a brief statement, Iraq’s health ministry said, “621 cases of asphyxia have been recorded following a chlorine gas leak in Karbala”.

“All have received the necessary care and left the hospital in good health,” it said.

Security forces charged with protecting pilgrims, meanwhile, said the incident had been caused by “a chlorine leak from a water station on the Karbala-Najaf road”.

Much of Iraq’s infrastructure is in disrepair due to decades of conflict and corruption, with adherence to safety standards often lax.

In July, a massive fire at a shopping mall in the eastern city of Kut killed more than 60 people, many of whom suffocated in the toilets, according to authorities.

AFP

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PHOTOS: US Soldier Searching For Her Nigerian Father

Published

2 days ago

August 10, 2025

Editor

Old photos of Zainab James Parents, Lateef Quadri and Claudine James. Credit: Facebook

A US soldier, Zainab James, has launched a public search for her Nigerian father, identified as Lateef Quadri

The 31-year-old took to Facebook on Sunday to share old photographs of her father and her late mother, Claudine James, including one where Claudine was pregnant with her.

According to Zainab, her mother became pregnant in 1993, and she was born in 1994. Sadly, she lost her mother.

Old photos of Zainab James Parents, Lateef Quadri and Claudine James. Credit: Facebook

In her post, Zainab wrote, “Update: Mother’s name : Claudine James, born Decenber 9, 1969 in Montego Bay, Jamaica (deceased) , Hey All! A real shot in the dark but why not! My mom(pictured) got pregnant with me in 1993 ( I was born 1994) while living in Brooklyn New York. I’m looking for my father or any of his family. All I know is he was Nigerian, possibly named Lateef Quadri or something like that. They didn’t have a long term relationship as he wasn’t present at my birth but he did choose my name. No one in my family met him either. Apparently she was friends with his sister who worked in a jewelry store with her.”