Assange family launches appeal for donations as Wikileaks founder heads home

By Serdar Dincel

ISTANBUL (AA) - The family of Julian Assange appealed for donations Tuesday as the WikiLeaks founder headed home.

The donations will cover travel from the UK to Australia via Saipan Islands where Assange is scheduled to attend a US court hearing Wednesday.

“Julian’s travel to freedom comes at a massive cost: Julian will owe USD 520,000 which he is obligated to pay back to the Australian government for charter Flight VJ199. He was not permitted to fly commercial airlines or routes to Saipan and onward to Australia. Any contribution big or small is much appreciated," Stella Assange, his wife, wrote on X.

A crowdfunding campaign has raised $61,792 as of the time of publication.

Assange was released Monday from the Belmarsh maximum security prison following bail, by the High Court in London before boarding a flight at Stansted Airport at 5 p.m. local time.

Court documents indicate that Assange is set to appear Wednesday at the US District Court in the Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth in the Western Pacific Ocean near his native Australia.

A judge on the island of Saipan is set to hear the case at 9 a.m. local time and sentencing proceedings are expected to be concluded within hours.

Assange is expected to plead guilty to a single count of violating the US Espionage Act, specifically, that he conspired to unlawfully obtain and disclose US national security information.

The plane carrying Assange landed Tuesday at the Don Mueang International Airport in the Thai capital of Bangkok to refuel, before heading to Saipan.

Assange rose to fame in the 2010s for leaking classified US documents on the internet, gaining him international accolades and detractors when he exposed sensitive American diplomatic correspondence and military records, including video of a 2007 US airstrike in Baghdad that killed several people, including two Reuters journalists.

Assange has doggedly opposed extradition to the US and spent seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in a bid to prevent the handover.

He was ejected from the diplomatic compound in 2019 and has spent the last five years in a British prison as he fought an extradition order to the US.