Embattled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has arrived Australia after he was freed by a United States court in Saipan under a plea deal.
Assange’s plane landed in Canberra hours after he pleaded guilty in a court in Saipan to a charge of espionage, related to obtaining and publishing US military secrets.
In the US Pacific territory courtroom, District Judge Ramona Manglona had sentenced Assange to five years and two months – the time he spent in prison in the United Kingdom fighting extradition to the US – and said he was free to go
The Australian had earlier flown into Saipan from the UK on a private aircraft. He walked into the court accompanied by members of his legal team and Australia’s ambassador to the US, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Addressing the court, Assange said he believed the Espionage Act under which he was charged contradicted First Amendment rights in the US Constitution, but that he accepted that encouraging sources to provide classified information for publication could be unlawful.
As a condition of his plea, he will be required to destroy information provided to WikiLeaks.
Saipan was chosen for the court appearance due to Assange’s opposition to travelling to the mainland US as well as its proximity to his home in Australia, prosecutors said.
The release of Assange and his return to Australia appears to mark the final chapter in a 14-year battle.
Assange spent more than five years in a UK high-security jail, and before that seven years inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, as he fought accusations of sex crimes in Sweden, which were later dropped, and battled extradition to the US, where he faced 18 criminal charges.
WikiLeaks’s Founder Julian Assange Arrives Australia After Plea Deal
