An American judge accepted Julian Assange’s guilty plea on Wednesday, marking the Wikileaks founder as a free man after pleading guilty to a violation of US espionage laws. During the hearing, the judge confirmed this information to Assange and the public present. The whistleblower had coordinated a deal with the US government, agreeing not to go to the mainland United States but to settle for his freedom in the Mariana Islands, an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean.
Following the ruling, Assange departed the courthouse for Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, without addressing the media. Shortly after his court appearance, Assange boarded a plane bound for Canberra in Australia, aimed to arrive in his home country by 11:30 am. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expressed contentment over Assange’s repatriation, saying that there was no point in detaining him any longer. The Australian government had been involved in the case through various channels and was proud of the positive outcome of their efforts.
Assange was sentenced to 62 months in prison for espionage law violations under the negotiated deal but would not need to serve the term. He had been in a British prison since April 2019 and previously spent seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Facing eighteen charges in the United States, Assange risked a 175-year prison sentence for publishing confidential information on American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, allegedly endangering the lives of American informants in the process. In courtroom testimony on Wednesday morning, he acknowledged that he had urged his source