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Julian Assange freed after agreeing to plead guilty to US charges. WikiLeaks boss already off from the UK to ultimately Australia. Breaking news Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been freed in the UK after agreeing to plead guilty to charges brought against him by the United States. Assange, who until now had been held in a British prison for the past five years awaiting extradition to the US to face trial for the leak of classified documents, is set to return to Australia, his native country, after appearing in a US federal court on Wednesday. His whistleblower organization on Monday posted to X with news that the activist “left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of June 24” after being “granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stanstead airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK.” His destination seems to be the Northern Mariana Islands – a US territory in the Pacific – as a June 24 letter [PDF] from the US Department of Justice’s National Security Division states the activist will on Wednesday appear in the islands’ federal district court to admit the allegations against him. After that he is expected to be allowed to leave for Australia with time served. The islands were chosen "in light of the defendant’s opposition to traveling to the continental United States to enter his guilty plea and the proximity of this federal US district court to the defendant’s country of citizenship, Australia, to which we expect he will return at the conclusion of the proceedings,” the letter states, along with an indication the proceedings will be considered and a sentence handed down in a single day. Assange therefore appears to be bound for home, and free. This is a developing story. We will update it with more info shortly