Canberra: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange returned to his homeland Australia on Wednesday after a decade-long legal battle over the release of classified US military secrets concluded in the US Pacific island territory of Saipan, where he pleaded guilty to violating US espionage law. His release ended a 14-year legal saga in which Assange spent more than five years in a British high-security jail and seven years in asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy in London battling extradition to the United States
Earlier today, Assange pled guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents. However, Assange said he had at the time believed the US Constitution's First Amendment, which protects free speech, shielded his activities. "Working as a journalist I encouraged my source to provide information that was said to be classified in order to publish that information," he told the court. "I believed the First Amendment protected that activity but I accept that it was ... a violation of the espionage statute."
Assange had flown from a London prison to Saipan in a charter jet and flew in the same aircraft to the Australian capital Canberra on the same day. He was accompanied on the flights by the 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. Supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Wednesday welcomed Saipan court's decision of freeing Assange after pleading guilty to violating the US espionage law in a deal that allowed him to head straight home to Australia.
What will Assange do?
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. One of his lawyers said Assange 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," said Barry Pollack.
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 media.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the Parliament that Assange's freedom was the result of his government's “careful, patient and determined work" after he spent five years in a British prison. “Over the two years since we took office, my government has engaged and advocated including at leader-level to resolve this. We have used all appropriate channels," Albanese said.
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.” Assange on Monday had left the London prison where he has spent the last five years after being granted bail during a secret hearing last week.
What was the case against Assange?
Assange, an Australian editor and publisher, walked out of Belmarsh maximum security prison on Monday, following a plea deal with the US Department of Justice. The 52-year-old man agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to disclose classified US national defence documents. He was wanted in the US on 18 charges, almost all under the Espionage Act after Wikileaks' mass release of secret US documents.
In April 2010 it published a classified video showing a 2007 US helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff. US authorities say Assange's actions with WikiLeaks were reckless, damaged national security, and endangered the lives of agents. The Trump administration’s Justice Department accused Assange of directing former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in one of the largest compromises of classified information in US history.
Reports from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq published by Assange included the names of Afghans and Iraqis who provided information to American and coalition forces, prosecutors said, while the diplomatic cables he released exposed journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates and dissidents in repressive countries. The US fought hard for Assange's extradition while he was imprisoned in a British high-security prison.
However, supporters and lawyers for Assange argue that he was acting as a journalist and is entitled to First Amendment protections of freedom of speech for publishing documents that exposed US military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Assange's global supporters called the prosecution a travesty, an assault on journalism and free speech, and revenge for causing embarrassment. Assange has been held variously under house arrest since 2010. If he had been extradited to the US, Assange would have likely faced a sentence of up to 175 years in a maximum security prison.
Why was Assange released?
Assange struck a plea deal where he had to plead guilty to a felony charge under the Espionage Act of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information relating to the national defence of the US. Rather than face the prospect of prison time in the US, he was expected to return to Australia after his plea and sentencing.
This conclusion gives both sides a degree of satisfaction. The plea deal represents the latest — and presumably final — chapter in a court fight involving the eccentric Australian computer expert who has been celebrated by supporters as a transparency crusader but lambasted by national security hawks who insist that his conduct put lives at risk and strayed far beyond the bounds of traditional journalism duties.
The Australian government, with support from other countries like Mexico and Brazil, had urged the US to drop the case against Assange. Earlier this year, US President Joe Biden hinted that the case against Assange for comprising the US national defence might be dropped.
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, welcoming a parade of celebrity visitors and making periodic appearances from the building's balcony to address supporters. His asylum was revoked in 2019 and he was arrested by the British police.
(with inputs from agencies)
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