WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was released by a court on the US Pacific island territory of Saipan on Wednesday after pleading guilty to violating US espionage law. As part of a deal, Assange will return home to Australia.
During the three-hour hearing, Assange pled guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defense documents. He defended his actions by citing the First Amendment, which he believed protected his activities as free speech.
“Working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide information that was said to be classified in order to publish that information,” Assange told the court. “I believed the First Amendment protected that activity, but I accept that it was … a violation of the espionage statute.”
Chief U.S. District Judge Ramona V. Manglona accepted his guilty plea and released him due to time already served in a British jail.
Assange, 52, has since left Saipan on a private jet accompanied by Australia’s ambassadors to the US and UK, according to flight logs. They are expected to arrive in Canberra just before 7 pm (0900 GMT).
The U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands handled the case due to Assange’s reluctance to travel to the mainland U.S. and its proximity to Australia, prosecutors said. Dozens of media outlets from around the world attended the hearing, although filming inside the courtroom was prohibited.
Stella Assange, Julian Assange’s wife, shared her thoughts on social media platform X, saying, “I watch this and think how overloaded his senses must be, walking through the press scrum after years of sensory deprivation and the four walls of his high-security Belmarsh prison cell.”
What happened
Australian-born Assange spent over five years in a British high-security jail and seven years holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London as he fought accusations of sex crimes in Sweden and battled extradition to the U.S., where he faced 18 criminal charges.
Supporters of Assange view him as a victim for exposing US wrongdoing and potential crimes, particularly in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Washington, however, has maintained that the release of the secret documents endangered lives.
The Australian government has long advocated for his release, raising the issue with the United States on multiple occasions.
“This isn’t something that has happened in the last 24 hours,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at a news conference on Wednesday. “This is something that has been considered, patient, worked through in a calibrated way, which is how Australia conducts ourselves.”
As Assange returns to Australia, the long saga surrounding his legal battles and controversial releases of classified information comes to a new chapter. The world watches closely to see how his return will unfold and what it means for the future of whistleblowing and press freedom.
