Julian Assange freed in UK after agreeing to plead guilty to US charges

Breaking news Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been freed in the UK after agreeing to plead guilty to conspiracy charges brought against him by the United States.

Assange – who has spent the past five years in a British super-max battling against extradition to the US to face trial for the leak of classified government files – is set to return to his native Australia once he's appeared in a US federal court this week to enter a guilty plea.

His whistleblower organization on Monday said 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 appears 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 before a federal district judge on the islands to admit the allegations against him.

After that he is expected to be allowed to leave for Australia with time served. Prior to being locked up in Belmarsh, Assage was in self-exile in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, again to avoid extradition to the States, until he was turfed out and handed over to UK cops, who arrested and detained him.

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