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Assange to be sentenced for bail violation on Wednesday

Assange earlier pleaded not guilty to violating his bail conditions in 2012

MOSCOW, April 30. /TASS/. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be sentenced for a British bail violation on Wednesday, WikiLeaks said on Twitter.

"Julian Assange will be sentenced at Southwark Crown Court at 10:30am tomorrow for ‘violating his bail conditions’ whilst seeking and obtaining political asylum. On Thursday at 10am there will be a hearing in Westminster Magistrate Court on the US extradition request," the tweet reads.

Assange earlier pleaded not guilty to violating his bail conditions in 2012. Law experts expect that he will be handed a prison term ranging between several weeks and several months on that charge.

WikiLeaks founder

Assange founded the WikiLeaks portal in 2006 to publish classified information about the activities of a number of governments, including that of the United States. After harassment charges had been brought against him in Sweden in 2012, Assange sought refuge in London's Ecuadorian Embassy to escape extradition. The rape case was dropped in 2017 but the United Kingdom continued to insist that Assange be arrested over his failure to appear in court in London.

Assange was arrested by the United Kingdom’s Metropolitan Police on April 11 after Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno had announced the withdrawal of his asylum. His lawyers say that if extradited to the United States, Assange may face a 35-year prison term or capital punishment. The US Department of Justice has said, though, that Assange may get a five-year prison term at most for computer hacking.

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