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Tehran Detains Fifth US Citizen

The American and Iranian flags in an illustration taken last September. (Reuters)
The American and Iranian flags in an illustration taken last September. (Reuters)
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Tehran Detains Fifth US Citizen

The American and Iranian flags in an illustration taken last September. (Reuters)
The American and Iranian flags in an illustration taken last September. (Reuters)

The total of US citizens detained in Iran has increased to five after the arrest of an American woman of Iranian origins, said Iranian extremist newspaper Khorasan.

The US woman used to work for NGOs in Afghanistan.

The newspaper added that Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani and US National Security Council official Brett McGurk have held Omani-brokered indirect talks that focused on releasing the fifth US citizen.

It added that the US suspended a deal to release four US nationals in Iran in return for four Iranian prisoners in the US “until the release of the US woman arrested” over spying charges.

Kani paid a visit to Oman last Thursday and held talks with Omani officials. It remained unclear whether he met US officials in Muscat or not.

Muscat hosted rounds of indirect talks between Kani and McGurk, reported Iranian and Western officials in June.

Iranian officials stated that the Omani-brokered dialogue increases the chances of releasing US nationals detained in Tehran in return for releasing some of Iran’s frozen assets in Iraq and South Korea.

“Iran has arrested and detained a fourth US national, further complicating the Biden administration’s efforts to secure an exchange of prisoners and lower tensions with Tehran,” reported the US Semafor news website weeks ago.

The arrest of the American citizen is now “a central part of stepped-up negotiations between the two countries” aimed at swapping prisoners, added the website.

Later, the Iranian Shargh newspaper reported that the fourth US citizen Shahab Dalili is of Iranian origins. He was arrested in March 2016 and sentenced to ten years in prison.

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Assange Heads to Australia after US Guilty Plea

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves the US Federal Courthouse in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on June 26, 2024. (Photo by Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP)
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves the US Federal Courthouse in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on June 26, 2024. (Photo by Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP)
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Assange Heads to Australia after US Guilty Plea

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves the US Federal Courthouse in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on June 26, 2024. (Photo by Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP)
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves the US Federal Courthouse in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on June 26, 2024. (Photo by Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP)

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange walked free on Wednesday from a court on the US Pacific island territory of Saipan after pleading guilty to violating US espionage law in a deal that allowed him to head straight home to Australia.
His release ends a 14-year legal saga in which Assange spent more than five years in a British high-security jail and seven years in asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy in London battling extradition to the US, where he faced 18 criminal charges, Reuters reported.
During the three-hour hearing, Assange pleaded guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified national defense documents but said he had believed the US Constitution's First Amendment, which protects free speech, shielded his activities.
"Working as a journalist I encouraged my source to provide information that was said to be classified in order to publish that information," he told the court.
"I believed the First Amendment protected that activity but I accept that it was ... a violation of the espionage statute."
Chief US District Judge Ramona V. Manglona accepted his guilty plea and released him due to time already served in a British jail.
"We firmly believe that Mr. Assange never should have been charged under the Espionage Act and engaged in (an) exercise that journalists engage in every day," his US lawyer, Barry Pollack, told reporters outside the court.
WikiLeaks' work would continue, he said.
His UK and Australian lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, thanked the Australian government for its years of diplomacy in securing Assange's release.
"It is a huge relief to Julian Assange, to his family, to his friends, to his supporters and to us and to everyone who believes in free speech around the world that he can now return home to Australia and be reunited with his family," she said.
Assange, 52, left the court through a throng of TV cameras and photographers without answering questions, then waved as he got into a white SUV.
He left Saipan on a private jet to the Australian capital Canberra.

Assange had agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count, according to filings in the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.

The US territory in the western Pacific was chosen due to his opposition to travelling to the mainland US and for its proximity to Australia, prosecutors said.