The Unconventional Negotiations for Julian Assange’s Freedom

As negotiations to end the lengthy legal battle between Julian Assange, the controversial founder of WikiLeaks, and the United States approached a crucial juncture earlier this year, an unexpected proposition was put forth by prosecutors that sounded straight out of a Monty Python sketch.

“Guam or Saipan?”

Believe it or not, this was a real choice presented to Assange’s legal team. The path to freedom for Assange, who dreaded the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars in the U.S., involved a peculiar decision to be made between two American-held islands in the vast Pacific Ocean.

Insistent on never setting foot on U.S. soil, Assange had set a condition for any plea deal. The U.S. government, on the other hand, required him to plead guilty to a felony under the Espionage Act, necessitating his appearance before a federal judge.

In a surprising turn of events in April, a lawyer from the Justice Department’s national security division proposed a clever workaround: What about an American courtroom that was technically outside the mainland?

After enduring five years of confinement in a London prison, where he endured 23 hours a day in his cell, Assange saw this offer as the most favorable one yet. The agreement settled on Saipan, located in the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific, approximately 6,000 miles from the U.S. West Coast and about 2,200 miles from his native Australia. (Guam was a slightly closer alternative than Saipan.)

Having spent nearly 14 years confined in London, initially as an exile inside the Ecuadorean Embassy and later in Belmarsh Prison, the toll on Assange was reported to be immense.