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JUST IN: Wikileaks founder freed after five years in prison

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After a years-long legal saga, Wikileaks says that founder, Julian Assange has left the UK after reaching a deal with US authorities that will see him plead guilty to criminal charges and go free.

Mr Assange, 52, was charged with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information.

For years, the US has argued that the Wikileaks files – which disclosed information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars – endangered lives.

He spent the last five years in a British prison, from where he was fighting extradition to the US.

Mr Assange also faced separate charges of rape and sexual assault in Sweden, which he denied.

He spent seven years hiding in Ecuador’s London embassy, claiming the Swedish case would lead him to be sent to the US.

Swedish authorities dropped the case in 2019 and said that too much time had passed since the original complaint, but UK authorities later took him into custody. He was tried for not surrendering to the courts to be extradited to Sweden.

According to CBS, the BBC’s US partner, Mr Assange will spend no time in US custody and will receive credit for the time spent incarcerated in the UK.

Assange will return to Australia, according to a letter from the justice department.

On X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Wikileaks said that Mr Assange left Belmarsh prison on Monday after 1,901 days in a small cell.

He was then “released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK” to return to Australia, the statement added.

Video shared online by Wikileaks appear to show Mr Assange, dressed in jeans and a blue shirt, being driven to Stansted before boarding an aircraft.

His wife, Stella Assange, tweeted thanks to his supporters “who have all mobilised for years and years to make this come true”.

She later told the BBC’s Today programme that the days running up to the US deal had been “touch-and-go” and “non-stop”, and that she was feeling “a whirlwind of emotions”.

The deal – which will see him plead guilty to one charge of the Espionage Act – is expected to be finalised in a court in the Northern Mariana Islands on Wednesday, 26 June.

The remote Pacific islands, a US commonwealth, are much closer to Australia than US federal courts in Hawaii or the continental US.

Stella said she was very limited in what she could say about the deal ahead of her husband’s court appearance. “I don’t want to jeopardise anything”, she said.

“The important thing here is that the deal involved time served – that if he signed it, he would be able to walk free. He will be a free man once it has been signed off by a judge.”

She said the priority for her husband is to “get healthy again”, be in touch with nature, and for the family to have “time and privacy”.

Stella also confirmed that the couple’s two children are in Australia with her, but she has not yet told them that he is to be freed, only that they were going to visit family and that there was “a big surprise” waiting for them.

“We’ve been very careful because obviously no one can stop a five and a seven-year-old from, you know, shouting it from the rooftops at any given moment,” she said.

Agence France Press quoted a spokesperson for Australia’s government as saying that the case had “dragged on for too long”.

His attorney, Richard Miller, declined to comment when contacted by CBS. The BBC has also contacted his US-based lawyer.

Mr Assangee and his lawyers had long claimed that the case against him was politically motivated.

In April, US President Joe Biden said that he was considering a request from Australia to drop the presecution against Assange.

In a victory the following month, the UK High Court ruled that Mr Assange could bring a new appeal against extradition to the US, allowing him to challenge US assurances over how his prospective trial would be conducted and whether his right to free speech would be infringed.

After the ruling, Stella told reporters and supporters that the Biden administration “should distance itself from this shameful prosecution”.

Reuters Supporters of Julian Assange holding placards outside the High COurt in London
Supporters of Julian Assange gather outside the High Court on the day of an extradition hearing for the Wikileaks founder in May.

US prosecutors had originally wanted to try the Wikileaks founder on 18 counts – mostly under the Espionage Act – over the release of confidential US military records and diplomatic messages related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Wikileaks, which Mr Assange founded in 2006, claims to have published over 10 million documents in what the US government later described as “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States”.

In 2010, the website published a video from a US military helicopter which showed more than a dozen Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters news reporters, being killed in Baghdad.

One of Mr Assange’s most well-known collaborators, US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, was sentenced to 35 years in prison before then-president Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017.

Even amid long-running legal battles, Mr Assange has rarely been seen in public and for years has reportedly suffered from poor health, including a small stroke in prison in 2021.

Courtesy: BBC

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Crime

Chinese national apprehended in Anambra for involvement in illegal mining.

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A 45-year-old Chinese national, Mr. Mu Hua Qiang, has been arrested in Aguleri, Anambra State, for alleged involvement in illegal mining. He was apprehended by operatives of the Operation Clean and Healthy Anambra (OCHA) Brigade during a surveillance operation and handed over to the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Awka.

Police spokesperson Tochukwu Ikenga confirmed the arrest, stating that the suspect’s statement was taken and he is in custody pending further investigation. Authorities say illegal mining remains a serious concern in Anambra due to its environmental and security risks.

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International

Education: Denmark permitting use of AI for English exams from 2026

We are launching pilot schemes to try to find the right balance,” Education Minister Mattias Tesfaye said in a statement, emphasising the need to encourage digital learning while upholding teaching standards.

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The Danish education ministry announced on Friday students in some high schools in Denmark will be allowed to use artificial intelligence to write English language exams from next year.

The move comes as education authorities around the world debate whether AI is a useful learning tool for those entering an increasingly digital economy, or a slippery slope to producing dumbed-down graduates.

The Danish government said the permitted use of AI in the English curriculum from 2026 would be experimental, and apply only to the oral component of the English exam for the high school diploma.

In that test, once a student is handed their topic, they would have one hour to prepare, during which they would be “permitted to use all available tools, including generative AI”, the ministry said.

The students would then have to give their oral presentation in person in front of an examiner.

“We are launching pilot schemes to try to find the right balance,” Education Minister Mattias Tesfaye said in a statement, emphasising the need to encourage digital learning while upholding teaching standards.

“With students growing up in both analogue and digital worlds, we need to ready them in the best way possible for the reality they will encounter after their schooling.

”When it comes to the written part of the English test, the ministry said students would have to do part of it handwritten to ensure no reliance on computers.

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International

Trump pledges to maintain federal forces in Washington amid mounting criticism.

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President Donald Trump on Thursday visited police and troops he has deployed in the US capital in what he calls a crackdown on crime, saying they were going to “stay here for a while.”

Trump ordered hundreds of members of the Guard, a reserve force, to deploy in Washington last week vowing to “take our capital back,” despite protests by some residents and statistics showing violent offenses falling.

“We’re going to make it safe, and we’re going to then go on to other places, but we’re going to stay here for a while. We want to make this absolutely perfect,” he said outside a US Park Police facility in Washington.

The 79-year-old Republican was surrounded by law enforcement from various local and federal agencies as well as National Guard troops.

Earlier Thursday he suggested he would go on patrol with police and the military, but instead he made a short speech and gave out pizzas and hamburgers.

“Everybody feels safe,” Trump said, adding that he plans to get the capital “fixed up physically.”

“One of the things we’re going to be redoing is your parks. I’m very good at grass, because I have a lot of golf courses all over the place. I know more about grass than any human being,” he added.

Trump wrote on social media early Friday that “there were no murders this week for the first time in memory” in Washington.

He said Mayor Muriel Bowser “must immediately stop giving false and highly inaccurate crime figures, or bad things will happen, including a complete and total Federal takeover of the City!”

Bowser has said that violent crime in the capital has been its lowest level in three decades.

Trump’s visit came a day after his vice president, JD Vance, was greeted by boos and shouts of “Free DC” — referring to Washington’s formal name, the District of Columbia — on his own meet-and-greet with troops.

Vance dismissed the hecklers as “a bunch of crazy protesters.”

The DC National Guard has mobilized 800 troops, while Republican states Ohio, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia are sending a total of around 1,200.

They have been spotted in tourist areas such as the National Mall and its monuments, the Nationals Park baseball stadium and others.

The overwhelmingly Democratic US capital faces allegations from Republican politicians that it is overrun by crime, plagued by homelessness and financially mismanaged.

But data from Washington police showed significant drops in violent crime between 2023 and 2024, though that was coming off the back of a post-pandemic surge.

Some residents have welcomed the crackdown, pointing to crime in their areas — but others have complained the show of force is unnecessary, or has not been seen in parts of Washington where violence is concentrated.

– Sandwich guy –

Several incidents involving the surge of law enforcement have gone viral as residents voice their discontent, including the arrest of one man who was caught on camera throwing a sandwich at an agent.

Banksy-style posters honoring the so-called “sandwich guy” have popped up around the city.

The National Guard troops have provided “critical support such as crowd management, presence patrols and perimeter control in support of law enforcement,” according to social media statements.

In addition to sending troops into the streets, Trump has also sought to take full control of the Washington police department, attempting at one point to sideline its leadership.

The deployment of troops in Washington comes after Trump dispatched the National Guard and Marines to quell unrest in Los Angeles, California, that was sparked by immigration enforcement raids

AFP

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