Julian Assange heads home after plea deal in US court
|
An aircraft carrying WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has left Saipan after he pleaded guilty to obtaining and publishing US military secrets.
Wednesday’s plea in the US Pacific commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands concluded a drawn-out legal saga that spanned continents.
The agreement with the US Justice Department required Assange to admit guilt to a single felony count but permitted him to return to his home country of Australia without any time in an American prison.
The judge sentenced him to the five years he’d already spent behind bars in the United Kingdom, fighting extradition to the United States.
The plea deal resolves a criminal case involving the receipt and publication of war logs and diplomatic cables that detailed US military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Assange is banned from entering America without prior approval as part of the deal.
A statement from the US Department of Justice said: “Following the imposition of sentence, he (Assange) will depart the United States for his native Australia.
“Pursuant to the plea agreement, Assange is prohibited from returning to the United States without permission.”
In court, Assange answered US District Judge Ramona Manglona’s questions and appeared to listen intently as terms of the deal were detailed.
Addressing the court, Assange said he believed the Espionage Act, under which he was charged, contradicted First Amendment rights but that he accepted that encouraging sources to provide classified information for publication can be unlawful.
Assange appeared upbeat and relaxed during the hearing, at times cracking jokes with the judge.
At one point, when the judge asked him whether he was satisfied with the plea conditions, Assange responded: “It might depend on the outcome,” sparking some laughter in the courtroom.
Assange smiled slightly as the judge imposed the sentence before pronouncing him a “free man.”
As a condition of his plea, Assange will be required to destroy information that was provided to WikiLeaks.
The US Justice Department agreed to hold the hearing on the remote island because Assange opposed coming to the continental US and because it’s near Australia.
WikiLeaks said Assange’s flight is expected to arrive in Canberra at 6.41pm AEST.
Wednesday’s guilty plea resolves a criminal case brought by the Trump administration Justice Department in connection with the receipt and publication of war logs and diplomatic cables that detailed US military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Prosecutors alleged that he conspired with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain the records and published them without regard to American national security, including by releasing the names of human sources who provided information to US forces.
But his activities drew an outpouring of support from press freedom advocates, who heralded his role in bringing to light military conduct that might otherwise have been concealed from view.
Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.
The indictment was unsealed in 2019, but Assange’s legal woes long predated the criminal case and continued well past it.
Weeks after the release of the largest document cache in 2010, a Swedish prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Assange based on one woman’s allegation of rape and another’s allegation of molestation. Assange has long maintained his innocence, and the investigation was later dropped.
He presented himself in 2012 to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he claimed asylum on the grounds of political persecution, and spent the following seven years in self-exile there, hosting a parade of celebrity visitors and making periodic appearances from the building’s balcony to address supporters.
In 2019, his hosts revoked his asylum, allowing British police to arrest him.
He remained locked up for the last five years while the US Justice Department sought to extradite him, in a process that encountered skepticism from British judges who worried about how Assange would be treated by the American criminal justice system.
Meanwhile, Assange’s wife, Stella, told the BBC that she was “elated” and said the preceding days had had been “touch-and-go” and “non-stop”.
Stella said she was feeling “a whirlwind of emotions” but the priority for her husband was to “get healthy again”, be in touch with nature, and for the family to have “time and privacy”.
She told PA news agency that she travelled to Australia with the couple’s two young sons Gabriel and Max on Sunday when it became clear that Assange would be freed.
with Reuters and PA
AP
