Julian Assange, now free, back in his native Australia – 06/26/2024 at 12:31

Wikileaks founder and whistleblower Julian Assange returned to Australia on Wednesday to enjoy his newfound freedom after an agreement with the American justice system which ended a legal saga of nearly 14 years.

The private plane transporting him landed on Wednesday evening at Canberra airport, where there were dozens of journalists, an AFP team noted.

His white hair swept back, the Australian raised his fist as he emerged from the plane, then strode across the tarmac to hug his wife Stella, lifting her off the ground, and then his father.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Assange, 52, was released after a quick hearing at the US federal court in Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands. “You will be able to walk out of this courtroom a free man,” Judge Ramona V. Manglona told him.

Mr. Assange will not have the right to return to the United States without authorization, said the American Department of Justice.

In accordance with the agreement reached with the courts, the former computer scientist, accused of having published hundreds of thousands of confidential American documents in the 2010s, pleaded guilty to obtaining and disclosing information on national defense.

“I encouraged my source”, the American soldier Chelsea Manning, at the origin of this massive leak, “to provide material which was classified”, admitted Julian Assange on Wednesday at the bar, tired but visibly relaxed. He then took his two lawyers in his arms.

He left the court without making a statement. “Today is a historic day. It puts an end to 14 years of legal battles,” said his lawyer Jennifer Robinson.

– “Suffered enormously” –

He then immediately boarded a plane which left the Mariana Islands, a small American territory in the Pacific, for Canberra.

“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 his wife.

His father John Shipton, in an interview with Australian broadcaster ABC, confided his “joy” because his son will be able to “spend quality time with his wife Stella and his two children, walking up and down the beach (.. .) and learn to be patient and play with children for several hours – all the beauty of ordinary life.”

“I am grateful that my son’s ordeal is finally coming to an end,” his mother Christine Assange said in a statement.

Julian Assange “suffered enormously in his fight for freedom of expression, freedom of the press,” said Barry Pollack, his other lawyer. “The work of WikiLeaks will continue and Mr. Assange, I have no doubt, will vigorously continue his fight for freedom of expression and transparency.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese welcomed a “positive result” to Parliament in Canberra that “the vast majority of Australians wanted”.

The whistleblower left the United Kingdom on Monday, where he had been imprisoned for five years, after agreeing to plead guilty.

Under the terms of this agreement, he was only prosecuted for the sole charge of “conspiracy to obtain and disclose information relating to national defense”, for which he was sentenced to a sentence of 62 months in prison, already covered by the five years of pre-trial detention.

– Call for donations –

Ms. Assange, a South African lawyer, appealed for donations to pay the $520,000 (485,000 euros) that her husband must reimburse the Australian government for chartering the plane that brought him to Australia. He was “not allowed to take a commercial flight,” she said on X.

The Northern Mariana Islands court was chosen because of Mr. Assange’s refusal to travel to the American continent.

The United Nations welcomed the outcome of a case that had raised “a range of human rights concerns”.

Former US Vice President Mike Pence, for his part, denounced a “false justice” which “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 Mr. Assange against his extradition to the United States, approved by the British government in June 2022.

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.

Targeted by 18 charges, Mr. Assange theoretically faced up to 175 years in prison.

Chelsea Manning, sentenced in 2013 to 35 years in prison by a court martial, was released after seven years after her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama.

The founder of WikiLeaks 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, dismissed the same year.

Since then, calls have grown for current US President Joe Biden to drop the charges against him, with Australia making a formal request to do so in February.

In the first official US reaction to the deal, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said he did not believe it was “appropriate to comment at this time.”