CANBERRA: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange landed to an ecstatic welcome in Australia on Wednesday after pleading guilty to violating US espionage law in a deal that sets him free from a 14-year legal battle.
Assange disembarked from a private jet at Canberra airport just after 7:30 pm (0930 GMT), waving to waiting media and cheering supporters before passionately kissing his wife, Stella, and lifting her off the ground. He embraced his father before entering the terminal building with his legal team.
Assange has not spoken publicly since being released and did not appear at a Wikileaks press conference at a hotel in Canberra, where Stella Assange said it was too soon to say what her husband would do next.
“Julian needs time to recover, to get used to freedom,” she said. “I want Julian to have that space to rediscover that freedom.” She added she believed her husband would one day be pardoned.
Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has lobbied for years to free Assange, said he had spoken to him by phone after his plane landed. “I had a very warm discussion with him this evening, he was very generous in his praise of the Australian government’s efforts,” Albanese told an earlier press conference. “The Australian government stands up for Australian citizens, that’s what we do.”
Assange’s arrival ends a saga in which he 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 Sweden on sexual assault allegations and to the US, where he faced 18 criminal charges.
During a three-hour hearing held earlier in the US territory of Saipan, 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, noting that the US government indicated there was no personal victim from Assange’s actions. She wished Assange, who turns 53 on July 3, an early happy birthday.