WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pled guilty to a single espionage charge in front on a US judge Wednesday and walked free after his 12-year battle against extradition to the United States ended in a plea deal.
The controversial figure was released from a British prison on Monday and flew by charter jet to a remote US territory in the Pacific where he officially entered his guilty plea and was sentenced to time already served.
Assange then departed for his home country Australia as a free man.
Assange has spent the past five years in the high-security prison in southeast London and nearly seven years before that holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in the British capital, trying to avoid arrest that could have led to life imprisonment.
On Monday, Assange, 52, agreed to plead guilty to a felony charge related to his alleged role in one of the largest US government breaches of classified materials after his whistleblowing website published nearly half a million secret military documents relating to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The plea deal caps a long-running legal saga, allowing Assange to avoid prison in the US and return to Australia.
Assange boarded a flight from London’s Stansted airport on Monday after being released on bail from prison, according to a statement from WikiLeaks on Tuesday.
“Julian Assange is free,” WikiLeaks said. “He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1,901 days there.”
Traveling with Australia’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Stephen Smith, Assange flew to Saipan, the largest island and capital of the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific.
Under the terms of the agreement, US Justice Department prosecutors sought a 62-month sentence – which is equal to the amount of time Assange served in the United Kingdom while he fought extradition.
The plea deal credited that time served, allowing Assange to immediately return to Australia.
With Assange resistant to setting foot in the continental US to enter his guilty plea, a judge conducted the hearing and sentencing together on Wednesday in Saipan.
“It appears that your 62 months imprisonment is fair and reasonable,” Judge Ramona Manglona said in her sentencing. “You will be able to walk out of this courtroom a free man.”
The Pacific island chain is a US territory some 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) west of Hawaii and a US federal district court is based in the capital Saipan. The islands are also closer to Australia, where Assange is a citizen and will return to on Wednesday.
Source: CNN
