Maduro welcomes the release of Julian Assange

Nicolás Maduro celebrated the release on Monday of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whom he described as an “example of courage and bravery in the battle for the truth.”

“On behalf of the people of Venezuela, we embrace and congratulate Julian Assange on his release. It is the triumph of freedom and humanity’s struggle for respect for human rights,” Maduro wrote on the social network X.

WikiLeaks announced on Monday, in X, that Assange, 52 years old and an Australian national, left the British high-security prison where he was being held in the morning and has already left the United Kingdom, with the aim of returning to Australia.

The website says Assange was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted Airport in the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and left the UK.

“After more than five years in a 2×3 metre cell, isolated for 23 hours a day, he will soon be reunited with his wife Stella Assange and his children, who have only known their father behind bars,” the website said.

WikiLeaks’ announcement comes after court documents revealed that Assange has reached a deal with the US Justice Department that will allow him to return to Australia and end a long-running legal saga over the leak of classified documents.

Assange is due to appear in court in the Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean, at 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday to finalize the agreement with the Justice Department.

The US justice system had charged Assange with up to 18 crimes for violating the Espionage Act due to one of the largest leaks of classified information in US history in 2010, which revealed secrets from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as data on detainees at the Guantanamo base, among other matters.