Julian Assange lands in Australia a free man after US plea deal

Julian Assange has arrived back in his native Australia after striking a plea deal with a US court to allow him to walk free, bringing an end a 14-year legal battle.

The 52-year-old landed in Canberra on a six-hour flight from the island of Saipan, an American territory in the Pacific, where he was freed after pleading guilty to one charge of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information.

Under the deal, a judge sentenced him to his time already served Belmarsh Prison, where he had spent five years locked up while fighting US attempts to extradite him, and wished him an “early happy birthday” for when he turns 53 next week.

US prosecutors had wanted Assange over accusations he broke the law and put the country’s national security at risk via the WikiLeaks website he founded in 2006. During a three-hour hearing on the US Pacific island territory of Saipan before flying to Australia, Assange pleaded guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified national defence documents but said he had believed the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, which protects free speech, shielded his activities.

"Working as a journalist I encouraged my source to provide information that was said to be classified in order to publish that information," he told the court.

"I believed the First Amendment protected that activity but I accept that it was ... a violation of the espionage statute."

On Wednesday, after arriving in the Australian capital, he is expected to hold a press conference at a hotel at 12.15pm, UK time.

Ahead of his flight landing, Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said he was “pleased” for Assange.

“This is what is standing up for Australians around the world look like,” Mr Albanese said.

“It means getting the job done, getting results and getting outcomes. Having the determination to stay the course and I am very pleased that on this occasion, this has been a successful outcome that I believe overwhelmingly Australians did want to see.”

Assange is reunited with his wife Stella Assange and the couple’s two young sons, Gabriel and Max. Speaking to the Assange campaign’s live stream on YouTube before his arrival, she said she was “elated, excited, exhausted”.

“I can’t get my head around it,” she said of her husband’s release. “It’s like I’m having an out of body experience.”

She also appealed for help in a fundraising campaign to help pay for the £394k flight from London Stansted to Saipan.

Assange’s father, John Shipton said he planned to ask his son in a low-key Australian way when he arrives: "Where have you been?"

"My faith has never, ever, ever died," he told Reuters. "That Julian can come home to Australia and see his family regularly and do the ordinary things of life is a treasure. Life measured amongst the beauty of the ordinary is the essence of life".

Mr Shipton said he was "divided in two" on the deal that saw Assange plead guilty to one charge of espionage, saying his release meant he would have precious time with his sons. He was nonetheless concerned about the "political and legal circumstances surrounding it".

"I think it is going to be a problem for journalists and publishers anywhere in the world to publish criticism of the United States government," he added.

Assange’s US lawyer Barry Pollack said the journalist had “suffered tremendously in his fight for free speech”.

He added: “Mr Assange revealed truthful, important and newsworthy information, including revealing that the United States had committed war crimes, and he has suffered tremendously in his fight for free speech, for freedom of the press, and to ensure that the American public and the world community gets truthful and important, newsworthy information.”

Assange was catapulted into the global spotlight in 2009 after he and his site WikiLeaks were linked to one of the largest publications of classified information in American history.

Along with Chelsea Manning, a military intelligence analyst, Assange was accused of disclosing tens of thousands of activity reports about the war in Afghanistan.

After being charged with an 18-count indictment by the US government in 2019, his lawyers claimed that he could have faced up to 175 years in jail.

Assange had agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count, according to filings in the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands. The US territory in the western Pacific was chosen due to his opposition to travelling to the mainland US and for its proximity to Australia, prosecutors said.

"This isn't something that has happened in the last 24 hours," Mr Albanese said. "This is something that has been considered, patient, worked through in a calibrated way, which is how Australia conducts ourselves."