After more than a decade of embassy asylum and prison in the UK, Assange is back in his home country of Australia. His family was able to welcome the WikiLeaks founder as a free man in Canberra.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has returned to his Australian homeland after a 14-year legal odyssey. After his charter plane landed, the 52-year-old celebrated an emotional reunion with his family in the capital Canberra.
Videos on social media showed him hugging his wife Stella shortly after getting off the plane – for the first time in freedom. Immediately afterwards, Assange was also able to hug his father John Shipton.
Numerous witnesses cheered as Assange left the private jet. Shouts of “Welcome home” could be heard. The Australian waved to the crowd and raised a victory fist to the sky several times. He is expected to make a public statement later today.
Wife: “Can’t stop crying”
Only an agreement with the US judiciary made his release and his departure to Australia possible. On the US Pacific island of Saipan, which is a US territory, Judge Ramona V. Manglona sealed the deal between him and the United States in connection with espionage allegations.
“With this verdict, it seems that you can leave this courtroom a free man,” said Manglona. Assange had previously traveled to the US territory in the Western Pacific on a private jet. “I hope that a little peace will be restored,” stressed Manglona.
Assange’s wife Stella wrote on social media after the court’s decision: “Julian leaves the Saipan court a free man. I can’t stop crying.” The lawyer married the Australian in 2022 while he was in prison and has two children with him. She had already traveled to Australia on Monday. Assange himself made no comment as he left the courthouse.
Assange pleaded guilty
In the courtroom, Assange pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose information for national defense purposes as part of the agreement with the US judiciary. In return for his guilty plea, Assange was given credit for his five-year prison sentence in the UK and was released.
For Assange, this marks the end of a years-long odyssey: after his escape, he found asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years and spent another five years in the British high-security prison Belmarsh in London.
Unnoticed by the public, Assange was released on Monday and taken to Stansted Airport. From there, the chartered plane took him to Saipan on Tuesday with a stopover in Bangkok. The basis for his release was the very deal he fulfilled on the Pacific island on Wednesday.
Secret documents published
For a long time, the American judiciary wanted to put Assange on trial for espionage charges. He would have faced up to 175 years in prison in the USA. Instead, he recently negotiated a deal with the US judiciary. In the future, however, Assange will only be allowed to enter the USA with the permission of the authorities there, as the Justice Department in Washington announced.
In 2010, Assange published a series of secret US documents on WikiLeaks. The approximately 700,000 confidential documents dealt with US military and diplomatic activities. They contained explosive information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the killing of civilians and the mistreatment of prisoners by US military personnel.
The US government had declared that Assange’s actions went beyond those of a journalist. He had published secret government documents and thereby put people’s lives at risk. Assange’s supporters, however, see him as a journalist protected by the US Constitution who exposed misconduct by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.