WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to plead guilty

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is set to plead guilty to violating U.S. espionage law on Wednesday, concluding a 14-year legal saga. The plea deal, reached in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, will allow the 52-year-old to return home to Australia.

Assange has agreed to plead guilty to a single count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defense documents. This deal ends a prolonged ordeal that included over five years in a British high-security prison and seven years in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, as he fought extradition to the U.S. and accusations of sex crimes in Sweden.

The U.S. government has accused Julian Assange of endangering lives through WikiLeaks’ release of classified documents, marking the largest security breach of its kind in U.S. military history. However, free press advocates and his supporters view him as a hero for exposing wrongdoing and alleged war crimes.

Assange is scheduled to be sentenced to 62 months of time already served at a hearing in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, at 9 a.m. local time (2300 GMT Tuesday). The location was chosen due to Assange’s reluctance to travel to the mainland U.S. and its proximity to Australia.

Assange, who is Australian-born, left Belmarsh maximum security prison early Monday and was granted bail by the London High Court. He is currently on a stopover in Bangkok, according to his wife, Stella Assange.