Timeline of the Julian Assange legal saga over extradition to the US on espionage charges

LONDON (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange headed to the Northern Mariana Islands on Tuesday to complete a plea deal with U.S. federal prosecutors that will allow him to walk free in return for a guilty plea.

In a deal with the U.S. Justice Department, Assange will plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information in a federal court in the U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific, the agency said in a letter filed in court.

This will allow him to walk free and resolve a long-running legal saga that spanned multiple continents and centered on the publication of a trove of classified documents.

Assange left a high-security London prison where he was in custody since 2019, after spending seven years in self-exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

Here is a look at key events in the long-running legal saga:

— 2006: Assange founded WikiLeaks in Australia. The group begins publishing sensitive or classified documents.

— 2010: In a series of posts, WikiLeaks releases almost half a million documents relating to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

— August 2010: Swedish prosecutors issue an arrest warrant for Assange based on one woman’s allegation of rape and another’s allegation of molestation. The warrant is withdrawn shortly afterward, with prosecutors citing insufficient evidence for the rape allegation. Assange denies the allegations.

— September 2010: Sweden’s director of prosecutions reopens the rape investigation. Assange leaves Sweden for Britain.

— November 2010: Swedish police issue an international arrest warrant for Assange.

— December 2010: Assange surrenders to police in London and is detained pending an extradition hearing. The