The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assangearrived in Canberra this Wednesday on a private plane after appearing before a court in the Northern Mariana Islands (USA) to formalize your freedom with American justiceafter passing Twelve years imprisoned in the United Kingdom.
Charter flight VJT199 landed around 7:40 p.m. local time (9:40 GMT) at Canberra International Airport after about seven hours of flight, after departing Saipan (Northern Marianas) at around 12:10 p.m. on Wednesday (2:10 GMT) .
“After almost 14 years of arbitrary detention in the United Kingdom, and 5 years in a maximum security prison for his groundbreaking work, Julian Assange has returned home to Australia“, underlines WikiLeaks in its X account.
Assange, who was received at the airport by his wife, Stella Assangeand his two children, plans to offer a press conference in a hotel in the Australian capital in a couple of hours, his first appearance in front of the media since he was released on Monday in the United Kingdom.
Around a hundred journalists were waiting at the Canberra airport to document Assange’s return to his native Australia after a long trip since he left London on Monday, and which led him to make a technical stop in Bangkok on Tuesday, before to fly at Northern Mariana Islands (US territory in the Pacific) to formalize your freedom today.
The 52-year-old Australian activist, journalist and hacker appeared early Wednesday in the US federal court in the Mariana Islands of the North in Saipan, where Judge Ramona Villagomez accepted the terms agreed between the US Department of Justice and Assange’s defense.
Pursuant to the agreement, by which Assange pleaded guilty today to conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US documents.Villagomez sentenced Assange to 62 months in prison, recognizing the time already served in the Belmarsh High Security Prison (United Kingdom), so he was released.
The Australian’s defense requested that the hearing be held in this US territory due to its proximity to Australia and because Assange did not want to travel to the continental United States.
This episode ends a 14-year saga that began in 2010 with the largest leak of classified documents in US historyby revealing Attacks on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistanjust like him mistreatment of prisoners in Guantánamoamong other matters.
Following the leak, Sweden issued an arrest warrant on charges of sexual abuse, which were later dropped. Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012.until he was arrested by British authorities in 2019, spending the last five years in a high-security prison.
(With information from EFE)
