Australia awaits Assange's arrival after US guilty plea

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has walked free from a court on the US Pacific island territory of Saipan after pleading guilty to violating US espionage law in a deal that allowed him to head straight home to Australia.

His release on Wednesday ends a 14-year legal saga in which Assange spent more than five years in a British high-security jail and seven years in asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy in London battling extradition to the US, where he faced 18 criminal charges arising from his expose of alleged war crimes and illegal US military actions in many countries.

During the three-hour hearing, Assange pleaded guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified national defence documents but said he had believed the US 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."

Chief US District Judge Ramona V. Manglona accepted his guilty plea and released him due to time already served in a British jail.

"We firmly believe that Mr. Assange never should have been charged under the Espionage Act and engaged in (an) exercise that journalists engage in every day," his US lawyer, Barry Pollack, told reporters outside the court.

WikiLeaks' work would continue, he said.

His UK and Australian lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, thanked the Australian government for its years of diplomacy in securing Assange's release.

"It is a huge relief to Julian Assange, to his family, to his friends, to his supporters and to us and to everyone who believes in free speech around the world that he can now return home to Australia and be reunited with his family," she said.

Assange, 52, left the court through a throng of TV cameras and photographers without answering questions, then waved as he got into a white SUV.

He left Saipan on a private jet to the Australian capital Canberra, where he is expected to land around 7:30 p.m. (0930 GMT), according to flight logs.

Assange was released on Monday from a high-security British prison where he had been held for five years while he fought extradition to the United States, which sought to prosecute him for revealing "war crimes" and illegal US actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.

He flew out of London to travel to the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific where he pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defence information, according to a court document.

A private jet carrying the 52-year-old stopped to refuel in Bangkok on Tuesday, taking off again around 9:25 pm (1425 GMT) to fly to Saipan, capital of the US territory where Assange is appearing in court.

A 'free man'

Assange's wife Stella said he would be a "free man" after the judge signed off on the plea deal, thanking supporters who have campaigned for his release for years.

"I'm just elated. Frankly, it's just incredible," she told BBC radio.

"We weren't really sure until the last 24 hours that it was actually happening."

She urged supporters to monitor her husband's flight on plane-tracking websites and to follow the "AssangeJet" hashtag, saying in a post on social media platform X "we need all eyes on his flight in case something goes wrong".

The court in the Northern Mariana Islands was chosen because of Assange's unwillingness to go to the continental United States and because of the territory's proximity to his native Australia, a court filing said.

Australia said his case had "dragged on for too long" and there was "nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration".

Stella Assange said on X that her husband would have to repay the Australian government the $520,000 cost of the charter flight and urged supporters to donate money.

End of an ordeal

Assange was wanted by Washington for releasing hundreds of thousands of secret US documents from 2010 as head of WikiLeaks.

Since then he has become a hero to free speech campaigners and activists around the globe.

He was indicted by a US federal grand jury in 2019 on 18 counts stemming from WikiLeaks' publication of a trove of national security documents.

The United Nations hailed Assange's release.

Assange's mother Christine Assange said in a statement carried by Australian media that she was "grateful that my son's ordeal is finally coming to an end".

But former US Vice President Mike Pence slammed the plea deal on X as a "miscarriage of justice" that "dishonors the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our Armed Forces".

Extradition battle

The announcement of the deal came two weeks before Assange was scheduled to appear in court in Britain to appeal against a ruling that approved his extradition to the United States.

Assange had been detained in the high-security Belmarsh prison in London since April 2019.

He was arrested after spending seven years in Ecuador's London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced accusations of sexual assault that were eventually dropped.

The material he released through WikiLeaks included video showing civilians being killed by fire from a US helicopter gunship in Iraq in 2007. The victims included a photographer and a driver from Reuters.

The United States accused Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act and supporters warned he risked being sentenced to 175 years in prison.

The British government approved his extradition in June 2022 but, in a recent twist, two British judges said in May that he could appeal against the transfer.

The plea deal was not entirely unexpected. US President Joe Biden had been under growing pressure to drop the long-running case against Assange.

The Australian government made an official request to that effect in February and Biden said he would consider it, raising hopes among Assange supporters that his ordeal might end.