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4 Hurt, 1 Arrested after Clashes Between Iranian Government Supporters and Opponents in London

FILED - 22 May 2024, Iran, Tehran: Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei leads a funeral service for the late President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign minister and others killed in a helicopter crash. Photo: -/Supreme Leader of Iran Official Website/dpa
FILED - 22 May 2024, Iran, Tehran: Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei leads a funeral service for the late President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign minister and others killed in a helicopter crash. Photo: -/Supreme Leader of Iran Official Website/dpa
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4 Hurt, 1 Arrested after Clashes Between Iranian Government Supporters and Opponents in London

FILED - 22 May 2024, Iran, Tehran: Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei leads a funeral service for the late President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign minister and others killed in a helicopter crash. Photo: -/Supreme Leader of Iran Official Website/dpa
FILED - 22 May 2024, Iran, Tehran: Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei leads a funeral service for the late President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign minister and others killed in a helicopter crash. Photo: -/Supreme Leader of Iran Official Website/dpa

British police said Saturday four people were hurt and one was arrested when supporters of Iran’s authorities clashed with anti-government protesters at a London event marking the death of President Ebrahim Raisi.
The Metropolitan Police force said officers were called Friday evening to “reports of disorder” at a venue in the west London area of Wembley, where an event was being held to mark Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash. Protesters had gathered outside the venue and clashes broke out, The Associated Press quoted police as saying.
The force said one person was arrested on suspicion of violent disorder. Four people were treated by paramedics for injuries that are not thought to be life-threatening or life-changing.
Police ordered those gathered to disperse and said Saturday that detectives would examine social media footage and other evidence to see whether more offenses had been committed.
Raisi died alongside the country’s foreign minister and six others in a crash in the country’s mountainous northwest on Sunday. He was interred Thursday at Iran’s holiest Shiite shrine.

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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.