"We welcome the release of Julian Assange (...) and the significant progress made towards a definitive resolution of this case, without further arrests", OHCHR spokesperson Elizabeth Throssel told the French agency AFP.
Assange was on his way to a hearing in a US federal court in the Mariana Islands today, where he is expected to walk free after reaching an agreement with the US judicial system.
Throssel said the Assange case "raised a number of human rights issues" and that his "increasingly prolonged" detention also raised concerns.
"We will continue to monitor developments in the coming days," added the spokeswoman in Geneva, Switzerland.
Assange is now accused of "conspiracy to obtain and disseminate information relating to national defense".
According to US court documents, he is expected to plead guilty to this charge only and be sentenced to 62 months in prison, a sentence already served in pre-trial detention in London.
The decision will allow Assange to return to Australia.
Assange's wife, Stella Assange, told British station BBC today that the WikiLeaks founder will be a free man as soon as the plea agreement is validated by the US courts.
"There is an agreement in principle between Julian and the US Department of Justice, which has to be validated by a judge in the Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific," said Stella Assange.
The 52-year-old Australian "will be a free man once the deal is validated by the judge", which will happen on Wednesday, she added.
The United States was prosecuting Assange for having disclosed, from 2010 onwards, more than 700,000 confidential documents on US military and diplomatic activities, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Assange has been detained in the United Kingdom since 2019, after seven years of imprisonment in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he took refuge to avoid being extradited to Sweden in a case in which he was accused of rape.
Based in Sweden, WikiLeaks was founded in 2006 and distinguished itself by releasing confidential documents obtained from anonymous sources.
