Canberra, June 26 (EFE).- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrived in Canberra on Wednesday to a warm welcome after pleading guilty to violating espionage law of the United States in a plea deal allowed him to walk free after a 14-year legal battle.
He landed in Australia on a private plane after formalizing his release agreement with a court in the Northern Mariana Islands, the US territory in the Pacific.
His freedom followed five years of imprisonment in the United Kingdom and nearly seven years of refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
The charter flight VJT199 he was traveling in landed around 19:40 local time at Canberra International Airport after a seven-hour flight from Saipan in Northern Mariana Islands.
“After enduring nearly 14 years of arbitrary detention in the UK, 5 years in maximum security prison, for his groundbreaking publishing work with Wikileaks, Julian Assange has arrived home on Australian soil,” WikiLeaks posted on its X account.
Assange disembarked shortly after landing, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and a tie. With his fist raised, he greeted the dozens of media persons and supporters cheering him at the airport.
The Australian was met on the tarmac by his wife, Stella Assange, whom he kissed and embraced, and his father, Australian architect John Shipton.
“I hope journalists and editors and publishers everywhere realise the danger of the US case against Julian that criminalises, that has secured a conviction for, newsgathering and publishing information that was true, that the public deserved to know,” Stella Assange said.
“I am very nervous and excited to see Julian at the airport,” his wife said earlier in an interview with the YouTube channel Assange Freedom Fight, the activist’s support group.
The WikiLeaks founder met his current wife, who was part of his legal team, during his stay at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London (2012-2019), during which they had their two sons (Gabriel in 2017 and Max in 2019).
Assange is scheduled to hold a press conference at a hotel in the Australian capital at 21:15 (11:15 GMT), after a long journey that began on Monday in London, included a technical stopover in Bangkok on Tuesday, and then a flight to the Northern Mariana Islands to formalize his release.
The 52-year-old Australian activist, journalist, and “hacker” appeared early Wednesday in the US court of the Northern Mariana Islands in Saipan, where Judge Ramona Villagomez accepted the terms agreed upon between the US Department of Justice and Assange’s defense.
Under the agreement, in which Assange pleaded guilty to conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US documents, Villagomez sentenced Assange to 62 months in prison, acknowledging the time already served in Belmarsh high-security prison (UK), thus granting his release.
Assange’s defense requested the hearing be held in this US territory due to its proximity to Australia and because Assange did not wish to travel to the US mainland.
The event concluded a 14-year saga that began in 2010 with the largest leak of classified documents in US history, revealing attacks on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the mistreatment of prisoners in Guantanamo, among other issues.
Following the leak, Sweden issued an arrest warrant on sexual abuse charges, which were later dropped.
Assange sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012 until he was arrested by British authorities in 2019, spending the last five years in a high-security prison in the British capital. EFE
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