WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned to his homeland Australia aboard a charter jet , hours after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing US military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concludes a drawn-out legal saga.
The criminal case of international intrigue, which had played out for years, came to a surprise end in a most unusual setting with Assange, 52, entering his plea in a US district court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands. The American commonwealth in the Pacific is relatively close to Assange’s native Australia and accommodated his desire to avoid entering the continental United States. Assange was accused of receiving and publishing hundreds of thousands of war logs and diplomatic cables that included details of US military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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 and warned of a chilling effect on journalists. 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.
Assange raised his right fist as he emerged from the plane and his supporters at the Canberra airport cheered from a distance. Dressed in the same suit and tie he wore during his earlier court appearance, he embraced his wife Stella Assange and father John Shipton who were waiting on the tarmac.
“He described it as a surreal and happy moment, his landing here in our national capital, Canberra,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters in Parliament House. “I had a very warm discussion with him this evening. He was very generous in his praise of the Australian government’s efforts.”
Assange was accompanied on the flights by Australian Ambassador to the United States Kevin Rudd and High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Stephen Smith, both of whom played key roles in negotiating his freedom with London and Washington. The flights were paid for by the “Assange team,” Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said, adding his government played a role in facilitating the transport.
Albanese told Parliament that Assange’s freedom, after he spent five years in a British prison fighting extradition to the US, was the result of his government’s “careful, patient and determined work.”
Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson, speaking outside the Saipan court, thanked Albanese “for his statesmanship, his principled leadership and his diplomacy, which made this outcome possible.”
It is unclear where Assange will go from Canberra and what his future plans are. His South African lawyer wife and mother of his two children, Stella Assange, has been in Australia for days awaiting her husband’s release.
Another of Julian Assange’s lawyers, Barry Pollack, expected his client would continue vocal campaigning. “WikiLeaks’s work will continue and Mr Assange, I have no doubt, will be a continuing force for freedom of speech and transparency in government,” Pollack told reporters outside the Saipan court.
Assange’s father John Shipton said ahead of his son’s arrival that he hoped the iconoclastic internet publisher was coming home to the “great beauty of ordinary life.”
“He will be able to spend quality time with his wife, Stella, and his two children, be able to walk up and down the beach and feel the sand through his toes in winter, that lovely chill,” Shipton told Australian Broadcasting Corp. The plea deal required Assange to admit guilt to a single felony count but also permitted him to return to Australia without any time in an American prison. The judge sentenced him to the five years he’d already spent behind bars in the UK fighting extradition to the US on an Espionage Act indictment that could have carried a lengthy prison sentence in the event of a conviction.
