By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
SAIPAN, NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS (Worthy News) – Julian Assange, the founder of the secrets-leaking website WikiLeaks, was freed by a court on the U.S. Pacific island territory of Saipan on Wednesday after pleading guilty to violating U.S. espionage law in a deal that will see him return home to Australia.
During the three-hour hearing, Assange pled guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defense documents but said he had believed the Constitution’s First Amendment, which protects free speech, shielded his activities.
He was to leave on a private jet accompanied by the Australian ambassadors to the U.S. and Britain, ending more than a decade of freedom restrictions, including over five years in a British jail and seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
“Working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide information that was said to be classified 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 U.S. District Judge Ramona V. Manglona accepted his guilty plea and released him due to time spent in a British jail.
REMOTE ISLAND
The eccentric computer expert and internet publisher reached the Northern Mariana Islands on Wednesday as he wanted to be closer to Australia.
His plane touched down on the remote American territory in the Pacific more than two hours before the plea hearing was scheduled, followed by dozens of media. It had earlier landed in Bangkok, Thailand, to refuel.
He admitted to a felony for publishing U.S. military secrets under a deal that spares him prison time in America after years spent jailed in Britain while fighting extradition to the United States.
Assange, 52, arrived at the courthouse in a white vehicle wearing a black suit and smiling as he walked past security with his team and Australia’s ambassador to the U.S., Kevin Rudd.
It was the stunning culmination of the U.S. government’s yearslong pursuit of the publisher, seen both as a press freedom hero and a reckless criminal for exposing hundreds of thousands of sensitive military documents.
Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad, Iraq, that killed 11 people, including two Reuters news agency journalists.
‘JUSTICE MISCARRIAGE’
Washington has said the release of the secret documents put lives in danger.
Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence called the new arrangement a “miscarriage of justice” and said Assange “endangered the lives of our troops in a time of war and should have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Prosecutors alleged that Assange conspired with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain the records and published them without regard to American national security.
They added the information, including names of human sources who risked their lives to provide information to U.S. forces.
Then-U.S. President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her to be released in 2017.
Assange was more than five years in a British high-security jail after spending seven in the Ecuadorean embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden on allegations of rape and sexual assault, which he denied.
GOVERNMENT ADVOCACY
Australian governments have advocated for his release and repeatedly raised the issue with the United States.
“For any Australian to be in a position of being in protracted incarceration without legal resolution is a situation where the government should be advocating on their behalf, and we have been doing that,” Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles told Australia’s ABC television Wednesday.
Marles added that Assange’s release would not sour relations between Australia and its close ally, the United States.
Australian-born Assange was due to be sentenced to 62 months of time already served at a hearing in Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands at 9 a.m. local time.
Assange’s wife, Stella Assange, said from Australia that it had been “touch and go” over 72 hours whether the deal would go ahead, but she felt “elated” at the news.
A lawyer who married the WikiLeaks founder in prison in 2022, she said details of the agreement would be made public once the judge had signed off on it.
Yet, with Assange on his way to Australia, questions were asked about how investigative journalists can escape prosecutors.
Copyright 1999-2024 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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