- Assange pleads guilty, concluding a long legal battle.
- U.S. District Judge Manglona accepts his guilty plea.
- “It is a great relief for Julian Assange,” says his lawyer.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange walked free Wednesday from a court in the US Pacific island territory of Saipan after pleading guilty to violating the US Espionage Act in a deal that allowed him to return directly to his home in Australia.
His release ends a 14-year legal saga in which Assange spent more than five years in a high-security British prison and seven years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London fighting extradition to the United States, where he faced 18 charges. criminals.
During the three-hour hearing, Assange pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of conspiracy to obtain and disclose classified national defense documents, but said he believed the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects freedom of expression, protected Your activities.
“When I was working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide information that was said to be classified so that it could be published,” 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 United States District Judge Ramona V Manglona accepted his guilty plea and released him due to time he had already served in a British prison.
“We firmly believe that Mr Assange should never 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 will continue, he said.
His British and Australian lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, thanked the Australian government for its years of diplomacy in securing Assange's release.
“It is a great relief for Julian Assange, for his family, for his friends, for his followers, for us and for everyone who believes in freedom of expression around the world, that he can now return to Australia and be reunited with his family. . ” she said.
Assange, 52, walked out of the court through a crowd of television cameras and photographers without answering questions, then waved as he climbed into a white van.
He left Saipan on a private jet for the Australian capital, Canberra, where he is expected to land around 7:30 p.m. (09:30 GMT), according to flight logs.
Assange had agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal charge, according to documents filed in the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.
The U.S. territory in the western Pacific was chosen because of his opposition to traveling to the U.S. mainland and its proximity to Australia, prosecutors said.
Dozens of media outlets from around the world attended the hearing, and many more gathered outside the courtroom to cover the proceedings. The media was not allowed into the courtroom to film the hearing.
“I look at this and think about how overloaded his senses must be, walking between the press after years of sensory depravity and the four walls of his high-security cell in Belmarsh prison,” said Stella Assange, the wife of the founder of WikiLeaks, on the social media platform X. .
long saga
Assange spent more than five years in what Judge Manglona called one of the toughest prisons in Britain and seven years sheltered in the Ecuadorian embassy in London while fighting accusations of sexual crimes in Sweden and fighting extradition to the United States. .
While trapped in the embassy, he had two children with his partner, Stella, who had been one of his lawyers. They married in 2022 at Belmarsh Prison in London.
Assange's supporters see him as a victim because he exposed US wrongdoing and possible crimes, including in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Washington has said the release of the secret documents put lives in danger.
The Australian government has been advocating for his release and has raised the issue with the United States on several occasions.
“This is not something that has happened in the last 24 hours,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at a news conference on Wednesday.
“This is something that has been considered, worked on patiently and worked on in a calibrated way, and that's how we behave in Australia.”
