Australian whistleblower and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange declared « libre » Wednesday by the American justice system, following a guilty plea procedure which closed a legal saga lasting more than a decade.
“You will be able to leave this courtroom a free man”Judge Ramona V. Manglona said at the end of a quick hearing in the US federal court in Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands.
Under a plea deal, the 52-year-old former computer scientist accused of publishing hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. documents in the 2010s pleaded guilty to obtaining and disclosing national defense information.
“I encouraged my source”the American soldier Chelsea Manning, at the origin of this massive leak, “to provide material which was classified”, admitted on Wednesday at the bar a tired but visibly relaxed Julian Assange.
Dressed in a black suit and an ochre tie, with slicked-back hair, Mr Assange hugged his two lawyers and signed a book for one of his supporters, an AFP journalist noted.
The whistleblower left the United Kingdom on Monday, where he had been imprisoned for five years, to be tried before the federal court in Saipan in the Mariana Islands, a small American territory in the Pacific, after having accepted the principle of a plea -guilty.
Under the terms of this agreement, he was sentenced to a sentence already covered by the five years already served in provisional detention. Mr. Assange must immediately fly to Canberra, the Australian capital.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Wednesday welcomed a “welcome development”. For his appearance, the whistleblower was accompanied in particular by Kevin Rudd, former Australian Prime Minister and current ambassador to Washington.
Following the agreement, Julian Assange was only prosecuted for “conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information”according to court documents.
“The priority now is for Julian to regain his health”, “he has been in a terrible state for five years” and wishes “to be in contact with nature”, underlined Stella Assange.
Call for donations
This South African lawyer has launched an appeal for donations to pay the 520,000 dollars (485,000 euros) that her husband must reimburse the Australian government for the charter of the plane which will take her to Australia. He has not “not allowed to take a commercial flight”she indicated on X.
Northern Mariana Islands / Nicholas SHEARMAN / AFP
The Northern Mariana Islands court was chosen because of Mr Assange’s refusal to travel to the US mainland and the territory’s proximity to Australia, according to a court filing.
The United Nations welcomed the release, saying the case had raised “a range of human rights concerns”.
“I am grateful that my son’s ordeal is finally coming to an end”declared his mother Christine Assange, in a press release broadcast by the Australian media.
Former US Vice President Mike Pence described the agreement as “false justice” Who “dishonors the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our armed forces”.
The agreement ends a saga of almost 14 years. It came as British justice was due to examine, on July 9 and 10, an appeal by Assange against his extradition to the United States, approved by the British government in June 2022.
Saipan Federal Court, June 26, 2024 / Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP
He was fighting not to be handed over to American justice which was pursuing him for having made public since 2010 more than 700,000 confidential documents on American military and diplomatic activities, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Among these documents is a video showing civilians, including a Reuters journalist and his driver, killed by fire from an American combat helicopter in Iraq in July 2007.
He faced 175 years in prison.
Targeted by 18 charges, Mr. Assange theoretically faced up to 175 years in prison under the Espionage Act.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange arrives at the Saipan federal court on June 26, 2024 / Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP
Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison by court martial in August 2013, but released after seven years after her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama.
The WikiLeaks founder was arrested by British police in April 2019, after seven years spent in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden in a rape investigation, which was closed the same year.
Since then, calls have increased for current US President Joe Biden to drop the charges against him. Australia made a formal request to do so in February.
In the first official US reaction to the deal, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that because it was an ongoing legal case, he did not believe “not appropriate to comment at this stage”.
