Julian Assange regains freedom after pleading guilty to a crime of espionage before a US court and heads to his native Australia

After a court battle that lasted more than a decade, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a free man.

As part of an agreement with the United States government, this Wednesday Assange pleaded guilty to a crime of espionage in front of a federal court in Saipan, capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the South Pacific.

The judge who presided over the hearing recognized Assange for the nearly 5 years he spent imprisoned in the United Kingdom, hence was not taken into US custody and was able to regain his freedom.

Assange left the court without making a statement and, according to WikiLeaks sources, will arrive in Canberra in the next few hoursin Australia, his country of origin.

This is the end of a journey that has led him to be held for 12 years: 7 of them in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and another 5 in a British maximum security prison, from where he left on Monday after reaching an agreement with the US Department of Justice

Assange was accompanied in court by Kevin Rudd, Australia’s current ambassador to the United States, and former Australian prime minister.

US prosecutors originally wanted to try Assange on 18 charges, mostly under the Espionage Act, for WikiLeaks’ 2010 and 2011 publication of confidential US military documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But after the agreement with the Washington authorities, this Wednesday Assange only accepted the crime of conspiracy to obtain and reveal national defense information.

The WikiLeaks founder told the court that when he published the classified files in 2010, he was a journalist and believed he would be protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which covers freedom of the press.

After the sentencing, Assange’s lawyer Barry Pollack said: “Wikileaks work will continue and Mr. Assange, I have no doubt, will be a continuing force for free speech and transparency in government.

“He is a powerful voice and a voice that cannot and should not be silenced.”

The hearing took place in the remote Pacific archipelago, as it is much closer to Assange’s native Australia than the US federal courts in Hawaii or the continental United States.

Assange spent the last five years behind bars at London’s high-security Belmarsh prison, fighting US attempts to extradite him.

In 2010, he faced separate charges of rape and sexual assault in Sweden, which he denied. He spent seven years hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, claiming that the Swedish case would lead to him being sent to the United States.

Swedish authorities dropped that case in 2019, saying too much time had passed since the original complaint, but U.K. authorities later stopped it. He was tried for failing to surrender to court to be extradited to Sweden.

In the United States, Assange was accused of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense informationafter the massive disclosure of Wikileaks in 2010.

Wikileaks had published a video filmed from a US military helicopter showing civilians being murdered in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

He also released thousands of confidential documents suggesting that the US military had killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents during the war in Afghanistan.

The revelations became big news, sparking reactions in all corners of the world and leading to intense scrutiny of American involvement in foreign conflicts.

Assange’s wife, Stella, told the BBC on Monday that she was “elated” that the legal saga was coming to an end.

She assured that the priority for her husband was to “recover his health”, to be in contact with nature and for the family to have “time and privacy”. The couple has two small children.

He also told the BBC: “We haven’t had much time to talk about the future – the first thing is that he will have to pay back the Australian government $500,000 for the chartered flights.”

Assange’s wife has launched a crowdfunding campaign to cover the costs, and said they have already raised more than half the sum needed.

The legal team for Assange and his wife had long claimed the case against him was politically motivated and called on US President Joe Biden to drop the charges.

In April, Biden said he was considering a request to do so from Australia, whose prime minister said the case had “dragoned too long.”

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