The private plane carrying Julian Assange landed on Wednesday evening at Canberra airport, where dozens of journalists were present, an AFP team noted.
His white hair pulled back, the Australian raised his fist as he emerged from the plane, then strode onto the tarmac to kiss his wife Stella, lifting her off the ground, then his father.
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During a press conference, Assange later explained that her husband needed privacy and time to recover after more than five years in a high-security prison in London.
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Julian will always defend human rights, will always defend victims, because that’s how he is
His wife, Stella
“He needs time, he needs to recover and it’s a process,” she said, appearing on the verge of tears. “I’m asking you to please give us space, give us privacy, let us find our place, let our family be family before he can speak again, at the time of his choice.
“Julian needs to recover, that’s the priority. And it is a fact that Julian will always defend human rights, will always defend the victims, because that is how he is,” according to Ms. Assange.
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A lawyer for Julian Assange, Jen Robinson, said the Wikileaks founder spoke to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese when the plane landed and “told the prime minister he saved his life.”
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.
Tired but visibly relaxed
Mr. Assange will not have the right to return to the United States without authorization, said the American Department of Justice.
Under the agreement, the former computer scientist, accused of making hundreds of thousands of confidential US documents public 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 Julian Assange on Wednesday at the bar, tired but visibly relaxed.
I’m grateful that my son’s ordeal is finally coming to an end
Christine, Julian Assange’s mother
He then immediately boarded a plane which left the Mariana Islands, a small American territory in the Pacific, for Canberra.
His father John Shipton, in an interview with the Australian broadcaster ABC, confided his “joy” because his son will be able to “spend quality time with his wife Stella and his two children” and savor “all the beauty of ordinary life” .
“I am grateful that my son’s ordeal is finally coming to an end,” his mother Christine Assange responded 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.”
Australian Prime Minister welcomes “positive result”
The Australian Prime Minister, welcoming a “positive result” that “the vast majority of Australians wanted”, explained that secret negotiations carried out by Australian intermediaries sent to the United States had helped to forge the agreement which enabled the release. “Negotiating the details of the agreement took some time,” said Anthony Albanese during a press conference. “It was the only way to resolve” the situation.
The whistleblower left the United Kingdom on Monday, where he had been imprisoned for five years, after accepting the principle of a guilty plea.
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 his five years of pre-trial detention.
Call for donations
Ms. Assange 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, because he was “not authorized to take a commercial flight.
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”.
The American justice system 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.
Assange theoretically faced up to 175 years in prison
Among them, a video showing civilians, including a Reuters journalist and his driver, killed by fire from an American combat helicopter in Iraq in July 2007.
Faced with 18 charges, Mr Assange could theoretically face 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.
In a first official US reaction, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said it “does not seem appropriate to comment at this time.”
