Bangkok: Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, will be flown to the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific, stopping in Bangkok for refuelling, a top Thai official confirmed on Tuesday.

"The flight will land around 11:50 am (0450 GMT) from London. It is expected to refuel and resupply with water before departing at 9:00 pm for Saipan island," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Assange, aged 52, has agreed to plead guilty to a charge of conspiring to obtain and share national defence information. This plea deal, outlined in court documents filed in the Northern Mariana Islands, is expected to result in his release to return to his home country of Australia.

He is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday morning local time and is likely to be sentenced to 62 months in prison, which includes credit for the over five years he has already spent in custody in Britain.

Assange gained attention for publishing around 7,00,000 classified documents concerning US military and diplomatic operations starting in 2010. After seeking asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for seven years to avoid extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges (which were later dropped), he was arrested in 2019 and has been held in a high-security prison in London since then.

Following his release from Belmarsh jail, Assange was taken to Stansted airport in northeast London and put on a plane as announced by WikiLeaks.

This plea deal marks the end of a prolonged legal battle over US efforts to extradite Assange from Britain, where he faced charges under the Espionage Act of 1917. The decision to settle was anticipated, especially with mounting pressure on US President Joe Biden to resolve Assange's case.

AFP