WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned to his homeland Australia aboard a charter jet on June 26, hours after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concludes a drawn-out legal saga.

Editorial |​Free man: On the release of Julian Assange

The criminal case of international intrigue, which had played out for years, came to a surprise end in a most unusual setting with Mr. Assange, 52, entering his plea in a U.S. district court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands. The American commonwealth in the Pacific is relatively close to Mr. Assange’s native Australia and accommodated his desire to avoid entering the continental United States.

Washington:

The US State Department on Wednesday renewed its allegation that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange put people at risk for revealing secrets, after he was freed in a plea deal.

“The documents they published gave identifying information of individuals who were in contact with the State Department — that included opposition leaders, human rights activists around the world — whose positions were put in some danger because of their public disclosure,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

“It also chilled the ability of American personnel to build relationships and have frank conversations,” Miller said.

Assange had published hundreds of thousands of confidential US documents on the WikiLeaks whistleblowing website from 2010.

The Australian agreed to plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defense information and was sentenced to the time he had served in London — five years and two months — and given his liberty.

Assange has become a hero for activists who point to his role in divulging information about the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but critics fault him for putting out vast quantities of government documents without any filtering.

Miller said that the State Department at the time “had to scramble to get people out of danger, to move them out of harm’s way.”

Pressed on whether anyone was harmed in the end, Miller said, “If you drive drunk down the street and get pulled over for drunk driving, the fact that you didn’t crash into another car and kill someone doesn’t get you out of the reckless actions and the endangerment that you put your fellow citizens in.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The story so far: In a dramatic conclusion to an extradition saga that lasted more than a decade, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on June 26 pleaded guilty to violating espionage law, allowing him to walk free to return to his home in Australia, as part of a landmark deal with U.S. Justice Department.

Mr. Assange, who founded the whistleblower media group WikiLeaks in 2006, released classified documents relating to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010, among several others. He was sentenced to the five years he had already served in a British prison while fighting to avoid extradition to the U.S. Mr. Assange had left the British prison on June 24 to appear before a U.S. federal court in the Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Western Pacific.

Julian Assange and the cases against him

Born in 1971 in Townsville, Australia, Julian Assange studied mathematics and physics at the University of Melbourne but dropped out before completing his degree. In 2006, he launched WikiLeaks, which publishes large datasets of “censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption.”

Also Read | How did WikiLeaks get Julian Assange in so much trouble?

The website first grabbed global attention in 2010 when it published a cache of around half a million sensitive military files on Iraq and Afghanistan, including a classified video from 2007 that showed an Apache helicopter firing indiscriminately, killing a dozen people, including two Reuters correspondents in Baghdad. Around 250,000 secret diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies were also released.

The leaks caused ripples across the globe, with the U.S. government launching an inquiry into one of the largest security breaches in its military history.

In September 2010, Mr. Assange fled to Britain after an investigation was launched into alleged sex crimes by him, based on the accusations of two Swedish WikiLeaks volunteers. The British police arrested him two months later. The WikiLeaks founder, however, denied the charges and claimed that the case was a pretext to extradite him to the U.S. He subsequently filed multiple pleas against extradition to Sweden but relief evaded him. In June 2012, shortly after the UK Supreme Court rejected his final challenge against extradition to Sweden, Mr. Assange went to the Ecuadorean embassy in London seeking asylum. While the Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation in 2017, the British police maintained that Mr. Assange would be arrested. He remained in the embassy for seven years.

While Julian Assange’s lawyers argued that he had exposed U.S. wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. government said his actions were beyond those of a journalist gathering information and had put lives at risk.

Meanwhile, former intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who had accessed the U.S. Department of Defense database and uploaded classified files onto a WikiLeaks dropbox, spent seven years in prison before then President Barack Obama commuted the remainder of her 35-year sentence. The U.S. administration said it won’t pursue criminal charges against Mr. Assange or WikiLeaks. 

The extradition saga

In 2016, ahead of the U.S. presidential election, the spotlight was back on the website after it released thousands of emails belonging to John Podesta, the aide of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. As per prosecutors, Russian intelligence operatives had stolen the emails and used the anti-secrecy website to improve Donald Trump’s chances of victory.

The new Trump administration, which held a different view, charged the WikiLeaks founder with collaboration in a conspiracy. A U.S. court later indicted Mr. Assange on 17 additional charges related to the violation of the Espionage Act of 1917.

As pressure mounted, the Ecuadorian government revoked his asylum in 2019 and Mr. Assange was arrested and jailed for breaching bail conditions in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison.

The U.K. approved Mr. Assange’s extradition in 2022. However, he won the right to appeal the verdict in a final legal bid to stop his extradition. His legal team claimed the case was politically motivated and an assault on the freedom of speech. The U.S. President’s remarks that his administration was “considering” a request from Australia to drop its prosecution was a ray of hope for Mr. Assange’s family.

On June 26, Julian Assange walked out of the Belmarsh Prison where he spent the last five years to appear before a federal court in the Northern Mariana Islands— to secure his freedom as part of a plea deal with the U.S. “Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London…” tweeted WikiLeaks.

What’s the deal? 

Under the deal, Julian Assange admitted guilt to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified documents during the hearing that took place on June 26 in a district court in Saipan.

Mr. Assange said in court that though he believed the Espionage Act contradicted the First Amendment, he accepted the consequences of soliciting classified information from sources for publication, AP reported.

The judge approved his plea, sentenced him to the five years he had already spent in the U.K. fighting extradition, pronouncing him a “free man.”

Julian Assange landed in the Australian capital Canberra on June 26. His wife Stella Assange and their two children have been in Australia awaiting his release.

While it is not yet clear what Mr. Assange’s plans are, his lawyer Barry Pollack has said, “WikiLeaks’ work will continue and Mr. Assange, I have no doubt, will be a continuing force for freedom of speech and transparency in government.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange waves after landing at RAAF air base Fairbairn in Canberra, Australia, on June 26 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned to his homeland Australia aboard a charter jet on Wednesday, hours after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concludes a drawn-out legal saga.

The criminal case of international intrigue, which had played out for years, came to a surprise end in a most unusual setting with Mr. Assange, 52, entering his plea in a U.S. district court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands. The American commonwealth in the Pacific is relatively close to Mr. Assange’s native Australia and accommodated his desire to avoid entering the continental United States.

ALSO READ | ​Free man: Editorial on the release of Julian Assange

Mr. Assange raised his right fist as he emerged for the plane and his supporters at the Canberra airport cheered from a distance. Dressed in the same suit and tie he wore during his earlier court appearance, he embraced his wife Stella Assange and father John Shipton who were waiting on the tarmac.

He was accompanied on the flights by Australian Ambassador to the United States Kevin Rudd and High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Stephen Smith, both of whom played key roles in negotiating his freedom with London and Washington.

The flights were paid for by the “Assange team,” Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said, adding his government played a role in facilitating the transport.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Parliament that Mr. Assange’s freedom, after he spent five years in a British prison fighting extradition to the U.S., was the result of his government’s “careful, patient and determined work.”

“Over the two years since we took office, my government has engaged and advocated including at leader-level to resolve this. We have used all appropriate channels,” Mr. Albanese said.

Mr. Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson, speaking outside the Saipan court, thanked Mr. Albanese “for his statesmanship, his principled leadership and his diplomacy, which made this outcome possible.”

It is unclear where Mr. Assange will go from Canberra and what his future plans are. His South African lawyer wife and mother of his two children, Stella Assange, has been in Australia for days awaiting her husband’s release.

Another of Julian Assange’s lawyers, Barry Pollack, expected his client would continue vocal campaigning.

“WikiLeaks’s work will continue and Mr. Assange, I have no doubt, will be a continuing force for freedom of speech and transparency in government,” Mr. Pollack told reporters outside the Saipan court.

Assange’s father John Shipton said ahead of his son’s arrival that he hoped the iconoclastic internet publisher was coming home to the “great beauty of ordinary life.”

“He will be able to spend quality time with his wife, Stella, and his two children, be able to walk up and down the beach and feel the sand through his toes in winter, that lovely chill,” Mr. Shipton told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Canberra:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned home to Australia to start life as a free man Wednesday after admitting he revealed US defence secrets in a deal that unlocked the door to his London prison cell.

Assange landed on a chilly Canberra evening in a private jet, the final act of an international drama that led him from a five-year stretch in the high-security Belmarsh prison in Britain to a courtroom in a US Pacific island territory and, finally, home.

His white hair swept back, the Australian raised a fist as he emerged from the plane door, striding across the tarmac to give a hug to his wife Stella that lifted her off the ground, and then to embrace his father.

Dozens of television journalists, photographers, and reporters peered through the airport fencing to see Assange, who wore a dark suit, white shirt, and brown tie.

WikiLeaks said on X that it would hold a press conference in the Australian capital at 9:15 pm (1115 GMT) on Wednesday, but did not say if Assange would be present.

“He will be able to spend quality time with his wife Stella, and his two children, be able to walk up and down on the beach and feel the sand through his toes in winter — that lovely chill,” said Assange’s father, John Shipton.

Assange’s long battle with US prosecutors came to an unexpected end in the Northern Mariana Islands where a judge accepted his guilty plea on a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defence information.

The remote courtroom was chosen because of the 52-year-old’s unwillingness to go to the continental United States and because of its proximity to Australia.

‘A free man’ 

As part of a behind-the-scenes legal negotiation with the US Justice Department he was sentenced to the time he had already served in London — five years and two months — and given his liberty.

“You will be able to walk out of this courtroom a free man,” the judge told him.

Assange had published hundreds of thousands of confidential US documents on the whistleblowing website from 2010.

He became a hero to free speech campaigners but a villain to those who thought he endangered US security and intelligence sources.

“Working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide material that was said to be classified,” Assange told the court.

Assange’s lawyer Jen Robinson told reporters it was a “historic day” that “brings to an end 14 years of legal battles”.

“It also brings to an end a case which has been recognised as the greatest threat to the First Amendment in the 21st century,” she said.

‘Too long’

Australian Prime Minster Anthony Albanese said he was “very pleased” by the outcome.

“Regardless of your views about his activities, and they will be varied, Mr Assange’s case has dragged on for too long,” he told parliament in Canberra.

The United Nations also hailed Assange’s release, saying the case had raised human rights concerns.

But former US vice president Mike Pence slammed the plea deal on social media platform X as a “miscarriage of justice” that “dishonors the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our Armed Forces.”

The US Justice Department said after the hearing that Assange was banned from returning there without permission.

US authorities had wanted to put Assange on trial for divulging military secrets about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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 material he released through WikiLeaks included videos 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.

‘Can’t stop crying’

In 2019, he was arrested and held in Belmarsh prison while fighting extradition to the United States.

He had spent seven years in Ecuador’s embassy in London to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where he faced accusations of sexual assault that were eventually dropped.

He met his wife Stella Assange while holed up in the embassy, and the pair married in a ceremony in London’s Belmarsh prison. They have two young children.

“I can’t stop crying,” Stella, who was waiting for him in Australia, said on X.

“I am beyond excited,” she later told reporters as she left a Canberra hotel together with Assange’s father to see her husband at the airport.

The announcement of the plea 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.

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

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.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that secured his liberty and concluded a drawn-out legal saga that raised divisive questions about press freedom and national security.

The criminal case of international intrigue, which had played out for years in major world stages of Washington and London, came to a surprise ending in a most unusual setting with Mr. Assange, 52, entering his plea on June 26 morning in federal court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands. The American commonwealth in the Pacific is relatively close to Mr. Assange’s native Australia and accommodated his desire to avoid entering the continental United States.

Read | Julian Assange: A journalist or an enemy of the U.S. State?

The deal required the iconoclastic internet publisher to admit guilt to a single felony count but also permitted him to return to Australia without any time in an American prison. The judge sentenced him to the five years he’d already spent behind bars in the United Kingdom, fighting extradition to the United States on an Espionage Act indictment that could have carried a lengthy prison sentence in the event of a conviction. He was holed up for seven years before that in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

He smiled slightly as U.S. District Judge Ramona Manglona imposed the sentence, pronouncing him a “free man.”

The conclusion enables both sides to claim a degree of satisfaction. The Justice Department, facing a defendant who had already served substantial jail time, was able to resolve — without trial — a case that raised thorny legal issues and that might never have reached a jury at all given the plodding pace of the extradition process. Mr. Assange, for his part, signalled begrudging contentment with the resolution, saying in court that though he believed the Espionage Act contradicted the First Amendment, he accepted the consequences of soliciting classified information from sources for publication.

Jennifer Robinson, one of Mr. Assange’s lawyers, told reporters after the hearing that the case “sets a dangerous precedent that should be a concern to journalists everywhere.”

“It’s a huge relief to Julian Assange, to his family, to his friends, to his supporters and to us — 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.

Mr. Assange arrived at court in a dark suit, with a tie loosened around the collar, after flying from Britain on a charter plane accompanied by members of his legal team and Australian officials, including the top Australian diplomat in the U.K.

Inside the courthouse, he answered basic questions from Manglona, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and appeared to listen intently as terms of the deal were discussed.

He appeared upbeat and relaxed during the hearing, at times cracking jokes with the judge. While signing his plea agreement, he made a joke about the 9-hour time difference between the U.K. and Saipan. At another point, when the judge asked him whether he was satisfied with the plea conditions, Assange responded: “It might depend on the outcome,” sparking some laughter in the courtroom.

“So far, so good,” the judge responded.

The plea deal, disclosed on June 24 night in a sparsely detailed Justice Department letter, represents the latest — and presumably final — chapter in a court fight involving the eccentric Australian computer expert who has been celebrated by supporters as a transparency crusader but lambasted by national security hawks who insist that his conduct put lives at risks and strayed far beyond the bounds of traditional journalism duties.

The criminal case brought by the Trump administration Justice Department centers on the receipt and publication of hundreds of thousands of war logs and diplomatic cables that included details of U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Editorial | Free man: On the release of Julian Assange

Prosecutors alleged that he teamed with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain the records, including by conspiring to crack a Defense Department computer password, and published them without regard to American national security. Names of human sources who provided information to U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan were among the details exposed, prosecutors have said.

But his activities drew an outpouring of support from press freedom advocates, who heralded his role in bringing to light military conduct that might otherwise have been concealed from view and warned of a chilling effect on journalists. Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.

The indictment was unsealed in 2019, but Mr. Assange’s legal woes long predated the criminal case and continued well past it.

Weeks after the release of the largest document cache in 2010, a Swedish prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Assange based on one woman’s allegation of rape and another’s allegation of molestation. Mr. Assange has long maintained his innocence, and the investigation was later dropped.

He presented himself in 2012 to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he claimed asylum on the grounds of political persecution, and spent the following seven years in self-exile there, welcoming a parade of celebrity visitors and making periodic appearances from the building’s balcony to address supporters.

In 2019, his hosts revoked his asylum, allowing British police to arrest him. He remained locked up for the last five years while the Justice Department sought to extradite him, in a process that encountered scepticism from British judges who worried about how Mr. Assange would be treated by the U.S.

Ultimately, though, the resolution sparing Mr. Assange prison time in the U.S. contradicts years of ominous warnings by Mr. Assange and his supporters that the American criminal justice system would expose him to unduly harsh treatment, including potentially the death penalty— something prosecutors never sought.

Last month, Mr. Assange won the right to appeal an extradition order after his lawyers argued that the U.S. government provided “blatantly inadequate” assurances that he would have the same free speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from Britain.

His wife, Stella Assange, told the BBC 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.

“He will be a free man once it is signed off by a judge,” she said, adding that she still didn’t think it was real.

Mr. Assange on June 24 left the London prison where he has spent the last five years after being granted bail during a secret hearing last week. He boarded a plane that landed hours later in Bangkok to refuel before taking off again toward Saipan. A video posted by WikiLeaks on X, showed Mr. Assange staring intently out the window at the blue sky as the plane headed toward the island.

“Imagine. From over 5 years in a small cell in a maximum security prison. Nearly 14 years detained in the U.K. To this,” WikiLeaks wrote.

Sydney:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will fly to the Australian capital Canberra within hours following a plea deal to set him free, the whistleblower website said Wednesday.

“Expected to depart in 2 hours, 58 minutes. To Canberra, Australia,” WikiLeaks said in a social media post, as Assange faced court in the Pacific US territory of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Assange, 52, pleaded guilty at the US court in Saipan to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate US national defence information.

“Guilty to the information,” Assange said in court, later joking to the judge that whether he is satisfied “depends on the outcome of the hearing”.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Saipan, US:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty in a US court in Saipan on Wednesday, AFP reporters said, in a plea bargain that will leave him a free man after years of legal drama.

The 52-year-old admitted to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defence information in the courtroom in the Northern Mariana Islands, a Pacific US territory.

“Guilty to the information,” Assange said, later joking to the judge during the proceedings that whether he is satisfied “depends on the outcome of the hearing”.

Assange has long been wanted by Washington for releasing hundreds of thousands of secret US documents from 2010 as head of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

He was released Monday from a high-security British prison where he had been held for five years while he fought extradition to the United States.

On Wednesday, he is expected to be sentenced to five years and two months in prison, with credit for the same amount of time he spent behind bars in Britain.

Assange’s wife Stella said he would be a “free man”, thanking supporters who have campaigned for his release.

“We weren’t really sure until the last 24 hours that it was actually happening,” she told BBC radio, saying she was “just elated”.

The Northern Mariana Islands was chosen because of Assange’s unwillingness to go to the continental United States and because of its proximity to Australia, a court filing said.

After the hearing is done, Assange will fly to Canberra in Australia, WikiLeaks said on social media platform X, adding that the plea bargain “should never have had to happen.”

The Australian government said his case had “dragged on for too long” and there was “nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration”.

– End of an ordeal –

Since 2010 Assange has become a hero to free speech campaigners and a villain to those who thought he had endangered US security and intelligence sources.

US authorities wanted to put Assange on trial for divulging military secrets about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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, saying the case had raised “a series of human rights concerns”.

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.”

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.

– Extradition battle –

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.

In the first official US reax to the plea deal, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that as the case is about to go before a judge, “I think it’s appropriate for me to not comment on the matter at this time.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Australian leaders cautiously welcomed an expected plea agreement that could set free Julian Assange, who was pursued for years over WikiLeaks’ publication of a trove of classified documents.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday there was nothing to be gained by keeping the Australian incarcerated.

A plane chartered by Mr. Assange landed on Tuesday in Bangkok as he heads to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific midway between Australia and Japan, where he is expected to appear in a U.S. federal court on Wednesday.

He is expected to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defence information, the U.S. Justice Department said in a letter filed in court.

Mr. Assange is expected to return to Australia if a judge accepts the plea agreement.

Public support for Mr. Assange has grown in Australia during the seven years he has spent avoiding extradition to the United States by hiding in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London and later during his five years in Belmarsh Prison.

Mr. Albanese has been lobbying since his government was elected in 2022 for the United States to end its prosecution of Assange, and his plight was seen as a test of the prime minister’s leverage with President Joe Biden.

Mr. Albanese had been a senior minister in a center-left Labor Party government that in 2010 staunchly backed U.S. criticisms of WikiLeaks’ classified information dumps. But Assange has breached no Australian law.

Mr. Albanese told parliament that Australian High Commissioner to the U.K. Stephen Smith had flown with Mr. Assange from London.

“The government is certainly aware that Australian citizen Mr. Julian Assange has legal proceedings scheduled in the United States. While this is a welcome development, we recognize that these proceedings are crucial and they’re delicate,” Mr. Albanese told parliament.

“Regardless of the views that people have about Mr. Assange’s activities, the case has dragged on for too long. There’s nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia,” Mr. Albanese added.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong acknowledged the advocacy of a range of lawmakers on Mr. Assange’s behalf, including delegates of the Bring Julian Assange Parliamentary Group who travelled to Washington last year with a letter signed by 60 Australian lawmakers calling for the prosecution to end.

Ms. Wong said Mr. Albanese had led the Australian effort, personally raising Mr. Assange with Mr. Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. “We want to see Mr. Assange reunited with his family in Australia,” Ms. Wong told the Senate. She also revealed that Mr. Assange had rejected Australia’s offer of consular visits for years until April last year when Smith made the first of his several prison visits.

Australia had argued there was a disconnect between the U.S. treatment of Mr. Assange and U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, a WikiLeaks source. Then-U.S. President Barack Obama commuted Ms. Manning’s 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her release in 2017.

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken pushed back against Mr. Albanese’s position during a visit to Australia last year, saying Mr. Assange was accused of “very serious criminal conduct” in publishing a trove of classified U.S. documents more than a decade ago.

Support for Mr. Assange crossed political party lines in Australia.

Opposition lawmaker and Assange supporter Barnaby Joyce, a former deputy prime minister, said the plea deal was an encouraging development. “We’ve just got to be still cautious, still cautious on how this proceeds because the end has not arrived,” Joyce told reporters in Australia’s Parliament House. He said Assange should not prosecuted because be committed no offense in the United States.

“If you ask me do I think what he did was morally correct? No, it wasn’t,” Mr. Joyce said. “But the issue for me is extraterritoriality.”

Opposition spokesman on foreign affairs Simon Birmingham also welcomed the apparent end to the prosecution. “We have consistently said that the U.S. and U.K. justice systems should be respected,” Birmingham said on social media.

A motion that called for the U.S. and Britain to bring the “matter to a close so that Mr. Assange can return home to his family in Australia” was supported by 86 lawmakers including Albanese in the 151-seat House of Representatives in February.

‘Power of quiet diplomacy’

Mr. Assange’s mother, Christine Assange, said the plea deal “shows the importance and power of quiet diplomacy.” “I am grateful that my son’s ordeal is finally coming to an end,” she said in a statement.

His father John Shipton used a radio interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp. in Melbourne to thank his son’s supporters. “It looks as though Julian will be free to come back to Australia and my thanks and congratulations to all his supporters in Australia who made it possible and of course Prime Minister Anthony Albanese,” Mr. Shipton said.

Julian Assange’s wife and mother of his two children, Stella Assange, was in Sydney awaiting for her husband’s return to Australia. She posted on social media an image of her talking to her husband on FaceTime and with the Sydney Opera House in the background. She said he was speaking from London’s Stansted Airport before leaving the U.K.

Julian Assange’s lawyer Geoffrey Robertson likened the case to the government-to-government negotiations behind a plea deal in 2007 that enabled Australian al-Qaida supporter David Hicks to be repatriated from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance as a suspected enemy combatant.

“It was much tougher with Assange because the Pentagon was so determined to punish him,” Robertson told ABC. “In the end, I think partly because Mr. Biden wanted to clear this off his desk in an election year … it has been resolved.”

Julian Assange was living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in 2013 when he made failed bid for election to the Australian Senate as a candidate for the short-lived WiliLeaks Party.

A plane carrying Julian Assange landed in Bangkok on June 25 for refuelling, as the WikiLeaks founder was on his way to enter a plea deal with the U.S. government that will free him and resolve the legal case that spanned years and continents over the publication of a trove of classified documents.

A chartered flight from London that Mr. Assange’s wife, Stella, confirmed was carrying her husband landed at Don Mueang International Airport.

Officials there told The Associated Press the plane was scheduled to continue to Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific, where Mr. Assange is expected to appear in court on June 26.

He’s expected to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defence information, according to the U.S. Justice Department in a letter filed in court.

Mr. Assange is expected to return to Australia, his home country, after his plea and sentencing. The hearing is taking place in Saipan because of Mr. Assange’s opposition to travelling to the continental U.S. and the court’s proximity to Australia, prosecutors said.

British judicial officials confirmed that Assange left the U.K. on Monday evening after being granted bail at a secret hearing last week.

Julian will be a free man, says Stella Assange

“Thirteen-and-a-half years and two extradition requests after he was first arrested, Julian Assange left the U.K. yesterday, following a bail hearing last Thursday, held in private at his request,” said Stephen Parkinson, the chief prosecutor for England and Wales.

The plea deal brings an abrupt conclusion to a criminal case of international intrigue and to the U.S. government’s yearslong pursuit of a publisher whose hugely popular secret-sharing website made him a cause célèbre among many press freedom advocates who said he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing. U.S. prosecutors, in contrast, have repeatedly asserted that his actions broke the law and put the country’s national security at risk.

Stella Assange told the BBC from Australia that it had been “touch and go” over the past 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. “He will be a free man once it is signed off by a judge,” she said, adding that she still didn’t think it was real.

She posted on the social media platform X that Assange will owe $520,000 to the Australian government for the charter flight, and asked for donations to help pay for it.

‘Tough battle’

Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, said the deal for Assange came about after the growing involvement of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

“This is the result of a long, long process which has been going on for some time. It has been a tough battle, but the focus now is on Julian being reunited with his family,” Ms. Hrafnsson told the PA news agency.

In a statement posted on the social media platform X, WikiLeaks said Mr. Assange boarded a plane after leaving the high-security London prison where he spent the last five years.

WikiLeaks applauded the announcement of the deal, saying it was grateful for “all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.”

There’s nothing to be gained by his incarceration: Albanese

Mr. Albanese told Parliament that an Australian envoy had flown with Mr. Assange from London. “Regardless of the views that people have about Mr. Assange’s activities, the case has dragged on for too long,” the Australian prime minister said. “There’s nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia.”

The deal ensures that Assange will admit guilt while also sparing him additional prison time. He is expected to be sentenced to the five years he has already spent in the British prison while fighting extradition to the U.S. to face charges, a process that has played out in a series of hearings in London.

Last month, he won the right to appeal an extradition order after his lawyers argued that the U.S. government provided “blatantly inadequate” assurances that he would have the same free speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from Britain.

The U.S.’ case against Assange

Mr. Assange has been heralded by many around the world as a hero who brought to light military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists. But his reputation was also tarnished by the rape allegations, which he has denied.

The Justice Department’s indictment unsealed in 2019 accused Assange of encouraging and helping U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks published in 2010. Prosecutors had accused Mr. Assange of damaging national security by publishing documents that harmed the U.S. and its allies and aided its adversaries.

The case was lambasted by press advocates and Assange supporters. Federal prosecutors defended it as targeting conduct that went way beyond that of a journalist gathering information, amounting to an attempt to solicit, steal and indiscriminately publish classified government documents.

The plea agreement comes months after President Joe Biden said he was considering a request from Australia to drop the U.S. push to prosecute Mr. Assange.

The White House was not involved in the decision to resolve Mr. Assange’s case, according to a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Mr. Assange made headlines again in 2016 after his website published Democratic emails that prosecutors say were stolen by Russian intelligence operatives. He was never charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, but the inquiry laid bare in stark detail the role that the hacking operation played in interfering in that year’s election on behalf of then-Republican candidate Donald Trump.

During the Obama administration, Justice Department officials mulled charges for Mr. Assange but were unsure a case would hold up in court and were concerned it could be hard to justify prosecuting him for acts similar to those of a conventional journalist.

The posture changed in the Trump administration, however, with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017 calling Assange’s arrest a priority.

Assange’s physical, mental health have suffered

Mr. Assange’s family and supporters have said his physical and mental health have suffered during more than a decade of legal battles.

Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 and was granted political asylum after courts in England ruled he should be extradited to Sweden as part of a rape investigation in the Scandinavian country. He was arrested by British police after Ecuador’s government withdrew his asylum status in 2019 and then jailed for skipping bail when he first took shelter inside the

Although Sweden eventually dropped its sex crimes investigation because so much time had elapsed, Assange had remained in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison during the extradition battle with the U.S.