CANBERRA - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned home to Australia to start life as a free man on June 26, after admitting he revealed US defence secrets in a deal that unlocked the door to his London prison cell.
Mr Assange landed on a chilly Canberra evening in a private jet, the final act of an international drama that led him from a five-year stretch in the high-security Belmarsh prison in Britain to a courtroom in a US Pacific island territory and, finally, home.
His white hair swept back, the Australian raised a fist as he emerged from the plane door, striding across the tarmac to give a hug to his wife, Mrs Stella Assange, that lifted her off the ground, and then to embrace his father.
Dozens of television journalists, photographers and reporters peered through the airport fencing to see Mr Assange, who wore a dark suit, white shirt and brown tie.
Mr Assange has not spoken publicly since being released and did not appear at a WikiLeaks press conference at a hotel in Canberra, where Mrs Assange said it was too soon to say what her husband would do next.
“You have to understand, he needs time, he needs to recuperate, and this is a process,” she told reporters, apparently close to tears.
“I ask you please to give us space, to give us privacy, to find our place, to let our family be a family before he can speak again at a time of his choosing.”
She added she believed her husband would one day be pardoned.
Mr Assange’s lawyer Jen Robinson said he had spoken to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese when the plane touched down, and “told the Prime Minister that he had saved his life”.
Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has lobbied for years to free Mr Assange, said he had spoken to him by phone after his plane landed.
“I had a very warm discussion with him this evening, he was very generous in his praise of the Australian government’s efforts,” Mr Albanese told an earlier press conference.
“The Australian government stands up for Australian citizens, that’s what we do.”
Mr Assange’s long battle with US prosecutors came to an unexpected end in the Northern Mariana Islands, where a judge accepted his guilty plea on a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defence information.
The remote courtroom was chosen because of the 52-year-old’s unwillingness to go to the continental US, and because of its proximity to Australia.
As part of behind-the-scenes legal negotiation with the US Justice Department, he was sentenced to the time he had already served in London – five years and two months – and given his liberty.
“You will be able to walk out of this courtroom a free man,” the judge told him.
Mr Assange had published hundreds of thousands of confidential US documents on the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks from 2010.
He became a hero to free speech campaigners, but a villain to those who thought he endangered US security and intelligence sources.
“Working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide material that was said to be classified,” Mr Assange told the court.
Ms Robinson told reporters earlier 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 said.
‘Too long’
Mr Albanese earlier said he was “very pleased” by the outcome.
“Regardless of your views about his activities, and they will be varied, Mr Assange’s case has dragged on for too long,” he told Parliament in Canberra.
The UN also hailed Mr Assange’s release, saying the case had raised human rights concerns.
But former US vice-president Mike Pence slammed the plea deal on social media platform X as a “miscarriage of justice” that “dishonours the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our Armed Forces”.
The US Justice Department said after the hearing that Mr Assange was banned from returning there without permission.
The US authorities had wanted to put Mr 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 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.
In 2019, he was arrested and held in Belmarsh prison while fighting extradition to the US. He had spent seven years in Ecuador’s embassy in London to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where he faced accusations of sexual assault that were eventually dropped.
He met his wife while holed up in the embassy, and the pair married in a ceremony in London’s Belmarsh prison. They have two young children.
“I can’t stop crying,” Mrs Assange, who was waiting for him in Australia, said on X.
“I am beyond excited,” she later told reporters as she left a Canberra hotel, together with Mr Assange’s father, to see her husband at the airport.
The announcement of the plea deal came two weeks before Mr Assange was scheduled to appear in court in Britain to appeal against a ruling that approved his extradition to the US.
Washington had accused Mr Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act, and supporters warned he risked being sentenced to 175 years in prison.
The plea deal was not entirely unexpected. US President Joe Biden had been under growing pressure to drop the long-running case against Mr Assange.
The Australian government made an official request to that effect in February and Mr Biden said he would consider it, raising hopes among Assange supporters that his ordeal might end. AFP, REUTERS
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2024-06-26 10:44:00Z
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