The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, landed this Wednesday in Australia, his native country, where he hopes to start a new life after reaching an agreement with the United States justice system that freed him in exchange for pleading guilty to revealing defense secrets. .
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Assange landed at night in Canberra, the Australian capital, on a private jet, the final stage of a 14-year long court battle. the last five in a high security prison in the United Kingdom.
When he got off the plane he raised his fist, crossed the tarmac to hug his wife Stella and then his father, before the eyes of dozens of journalists.
A press conference is scheduled for this Wednesday.
Julian Assange upon his arrival in Australia.
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The Australian, accused of espionage, was declared a “free man” by the United States justice system on Wednesday thanks to an agreement reached after almost 14 years of judicial battle.
“You can walk out of this courtroom a free man,” Judge Ramona V. Manglona said at the end of a quick hearing Wednesday in the U.S. federal court in Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory.
However, Assange will not be able to travel to the United States without authorization, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
You can walk out of this courtroom a free man.
Following the agreement, The 52-year-old former hacker, accused of publishing hundreds of thousands of confidential US documents in the 2010s, pleaded guilty to obtaining and disclosing national defense information.
“I encouraged my source to provide classified material,” Assange said in court Wednesday, referring to US soldier Chelsea Manning who leaked the information.
Assange, tired but visibly relaxed, was wearing a black suit and an ocher tie, with gelled hair, indicated AFP journalists at the scene. He then left the room, without making any statement.
“Today is a historic day. It puts an end to 14 years of legal battles,” including seven years of confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, said one of his lawyers, Jennifer Robinson.
‘Suffering’
After leaving the court Assange boarded a private plane that left the Mariana Islands for Canberra.
“He suffered enormously for his fight for freedom of expression, freedom of the press,” said Barry Pollack, his other lawyer. “We firmly believe that Mr. Assange should never have been charged under the Espionage Act,” he added.
Julian Assange with his wife, Stella.
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Former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, who was Assange’s lawyer, celebrated that “he can finally be a free man.”
Assange left the United Kingdom on Monday, where he had been imprisoned for five years after agreeing to plead guilty before the United States justice system.
The agreement involved charging him with a single charge, “conspiracy to obtain and disclose information related to national defense,” for which He was sentenced to 62 months in prison, a sentence that has already been served with the five years he spent in preventive detention.
Assange refused to travel to the continental United States and asked to appear in court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a territory near Australia, according to a court filing.
The agreement puts an end to a case that began almost 14 years ago. The British government had approved his extradition to the United States in June 2022, but on May 20, justice granted him the right to appeal in a hearing scheduled for July 9 and 10.
The Australian was accused of having made public, starting in 2010, more than 700,000 confidential documents on the military and diplomatic activities of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other countries.
Julian Assange, in an image published by Wikileaks in X as his plane approaches Bangkok airport.
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Among the documents is a video filmed in July 2007 from a helicopter in which civilians are seen being shot at, including a Reuters journalist and his driver, who died.
Assange was initially charged with 18 counts and He theoretically faced up to 175 years in prison under the Espionage Act.
Chelsea Manning was sentenced in August 2013 to 35 years in prison by a military court but was released seven years later after President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.
The founder of WikiLeaks was arrested by British police in April 2019, after spending seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden in a rape investigation, which was finally dismissed.
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