WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange released from UK prison after five years

LONDON: British authorities have released Julian Assange from a UK prison after the controversial whistleblower struck a plea deal with the US Justice Department.

Fifty-two-year-old Assange, who founded WikiLeaks in 2006, left the UK, where he had been jailed for the last five years, after striking a plea deal with Washington.

Even though Assange’s jail term in UK has come to an end, he is still set to serve five years in the United States as part of the settlement reached with the Justice Department.

Latest reports say the Australian editor and publisher is expected to plead guilty to an espionage act in a court in the Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth in the Western Pacific.

The Australian government responded that Assange’s case had “dragged on for too long” and there was “nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration,” AFP reported.

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