“You will be able to leave this courtroom a free man”: 14 years after the start of his legal saga, whistleblower Julian Assange has reached an agreement with American justice. On Wednesday June 26, a quick hearing at the American federal court in Saipan (Northern Mariana Islands), presided over by Judge Ramona V. Manglona, put an end to the legal woes of the founder of WikiLeaks.
The 52-year-old former computer scientist, accused of publishing hundreds of thousands of confidential US documents in the 2010s, pleaded guilty to obtaining and disclosing national defense information.
“I encouraged my source,” the American military officer Chelsea Manning, who was behind this massive leak, “to provide material that was classified,” admitted a tired but visibly relaxed Julian Assange on Wednesday. However, the latter will not be allowed to return to the United States without authorization, the American Department of Justice specified in a press release.
Dressed in a black suit and an ocher tie, his hair slicked back, Julian Assange took his two lawyers in his arms and signed a book for one of his supporters before leaving the court under the lens of the cameras, without making declaration. “Today is a historic day. It puts an end to 14 years of legal battles,” said one of his lawyers, Jennifer Robinson.
“A terrible state of health”
The founder of WikiLeaks immediately boarded a private plane which left the Mariana Islands, a small American territory in the Pacific, bound for Canberra, the Australian capital, where he is expected in the evening. “The priority now is for Julian to regain his health”, “he has been in a terrible state for five years” and wishes “to be in contact with nature”, underlined his wife, Stella Assange, who said she could not “stop to cry” with joy since the announcement of the release.
Julian Assange “suffered enormously in his fight for freedom of expression, freedom of the press,” said Barry Pollack, his other lawyer. “We strongly believe that Mr. Assange should never have been charged under the Espionage Act,” he added. “The work of WikiLeaks will continue and Mr. Assange, I have no doubt, will vigorously continue his fight for freedom of expression and transparency.”
The whistleblower left the United Kingdom, where he had been imprisoned for five years, on Monday to stand trial in the federal court in Saipan, after agreeing to a plea deal. Under the terms of the agreement, he was now only charged with one count: “conspiracy to obtain and disclose information relating to national defense.” He was sentenced to 62 months in prison, which was already covered by the five years served in pretrial detention. The whistleblower was accompanied by Kevin Rudd, former Australian Prime Minister and current ambassador to Washington, for his appearance.
Supporters of Julian Assange celebrate his release outside the US Consulate in Sydney, June 26, 2024
© / afp.com/Saeed KHAN
Call for donations
His wife Stella Assange, a lawyer by profession, launched an appeal for donations to pay the 520,000 dollars (485,000 euros) that her husband must reimburse the Australian government for chartering the plane which will take him to Australia. He was “not allowed to take a commercial flight”, she indicated on the territory’s proximity to Australia, according to a document filed in court.
The United Nations welcomed the release, saying the case had raised “a range of human rights concerns”. “I am grateful that my son’s ordeal is finally coming to an end,” said his mother Christine Assange, in a statement released by Australian media. Former US Vice President Mike Pence called the agreement “false justice” which “dishonors the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our armed forces”.
The agreement ends a saga of almost 14 years. It intervened as British justice was due to examine, on July 9 and 10, an appeal by Assange against his extradition to the United States, approved by the British government in June 2022. He was fighting not to be handed over to the American justice which was pursuing him for having made public from 2010 more than 700,000 confidential documents on American military and diplomatic activities, in particular in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He faced 175 years in prison
Among these documents is a video showing civilians, including a Reuters journalist and his driver, killed by fire from an American combat helicopter in Iraq in July 2007. Targeted by 18 charges, the computer scientist Australian could theoretically face up to 175 years in prison under the Espionage Act. Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison by court martial in August 2013, but released after seven years after her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama.
The founder of WikiLeaks was arrested by British police in April 2019, after seven years spent in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden in a rape investigation, dismissed the same year. Since then, calls have increased for current US President Joe Biden to drop the charges against him. Australia made a formal request to do so in February. In the first official US reaction to the deal, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that because it was an ongoing legal case, it did not seem “appropriate to do so.” no comment at this stage.