WikiLeaks founder Assange freed in US plea deal

Julian Assange was on his way to his native Australia on Wednesday as a free man after years of international legal drama for the WikiLeaks founder, who had long been wanted for revealing US state secrets.

Assange, who from 2010 published hundreds of thousands of secret US documents as head of the whistleblowing website, was released this week from a high-security British prison.

The 52-year-old traveled to the Northern Mariana Islands, a Pacific US territory, to plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defence information.

He was sentenced Wednesday to five years and two months in prison — but credited for the same amount of time he spent behind bars in Britain while fighting extradition to the United States.

“You will be able to walk out of this courtroom a free man,” the judge told Assange, adding she hoped the deal would restore some “peace” to him after his incarceration.

Over the years, Assange has become a hero to free speech campaigners and a villain to those who thought he had endangered US security and intelligence sources.

He did not address the media as he left the court, and his plane took off shortly thereafter for Canberra, where he will be reunited with his family.

“Working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide material that was said to be classified,” Assange, dressed in a black suit with a brown tie and his hair slicked back, told the court.

His lawyer Jen Robinson said after the hearing it was a “historic day” that “brings to an end 14 years of legal battles”.

“It also brings to an end a case which has been recognised as the greatest threat to the First Amendment in the 21st century,” she told reporters, calling the plea bargain a “huge relief”.

– Case ‘dragged on’ –

Looking tired but relaxed during the proceedings, Assange shared a brief laugh with Kevin Rudd, Australia’s ambassador to the United States.

The Northern Mariana Islands was chosen because of Assange’s unwillingness to go to the continental United States and because of its proximity to Australia.

Journalists and curious locals, several in colourful Hawaiian shirts, packed the small courtroom. One Saipan resident told AFP he had come to “see the main event”.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the plea deal hearing was a “welcome development”.

His government had earlier said Assange’s case had “dragged on for too long” with “nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration”.

WikiLeaks said on social media platform X that the plea bargain “should never have had to happen.”

But former US vice president Mike Pence slammed the plea deal on X as a “miscarriage of justice” that “dishonors the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our Armed Forces.”

US authorities had wanted to put Assange on trial for divulging military secrets about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was indicted by a US federal grand jury in 2019 on 18 counts stemming from WikiLeaks’ publication of a trove of national security documents.

The United Nations hailed Assange’s release, saying the case had raised “a series of human rights concerns”.

– End to ‘ordeal’ –

Assange’s mother Christine said in a statement carried by Australian media that she was “grateful that my son’s ordeal is finally coming to an end.”

The announcement of the deal came two weeks before Assange was scheduled to appear in court in Britain to appeal against a ruling that approved his extradition to the United States.

Assange had been detained in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London since April 2019.

He was arrested after spending seven years in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced accusations of sexual assault that were eventually dropped.

The material he released through WikiLeaks included video showing civilians being killed by fire from a US helicopter gunship in Iraq in 2007. The victims included a photographer and a driver from Reuters.

The United States accused Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act and supporters warned he risked being sentenced to 175 years in prison.

The British government approved his extradition in June 2022 but — in a recent twist — two British judges said in May that he could appeal against the transfer.

The plea deal was not entirely unexpected. US President Joe Biden had been under growing pressure to drop the long-running case against Assange.

The Australian government made an official request to that effect in February and Biden said he would consider it, raising hopes among Assange supporters that his ordeal might end. (BSS/AFP)