(Tribune News Service) — Julian Assange landed in Australia for the first time in more than a decade, following a guilty plea in a U.S. court that allowed him to return to his home country a free man after serving time in a U.K. prison and holing up in an Ecuadorian embassy.

Assange touched down in the capital city of Canberra on Wednesday evening after flying from the Northern Mariana Islands. He arrived in the U.S. territory earlier to appear before a federal court, where he pleaded guilty to unlawfully obtaining and disclosing “classified documents relating to the national defense,” according to a statement from the U.S. Justice Department.

After exiting the plane, Assange punched his fist in the air before hugging his wife, Stella, and his father, Richard. He didn’t immediately address reporters.

The Wikileaks founder was given a 62-month time-served sentence, granting him credit for the five years he spent in a high-security UK prison as he fought extradition to the U.S. and allowing him to avoid additional jail time in America.

Assange lawyer, Barry J Pollack, told journalists in Canberra that plans for a deal with the U.S. government had seemed to be going nowhere until the past month. “We were not close to any sort of a resolution until a few weeks ago, when the Department of Justice reengaged, and there have been very tense negotiations over the past few weeks,” he said.

Assange did not directly address a crowd of supporters in Canberra, with his wife Stella telling journalists that he needed time to process “what he’s been through.” “I ask you please to give us space, to give us privacy.”

Assange’s arrival in Canberra marks the end of a multi-country journey for the 52-year-old Australian after he was freed in the U.K. on Monday, flying first to Thailand to refuel and then on to the Northern Mariana Islands.

Addressing reporters in Canberra, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had spoken to Assange shortly after the plane touched down, but the Australian leader wouldn’t say if he planned to meet with him in coming days.

“He’s been through a considerable ordeal,” Albanese said. “Regardless of what you think of his activities, Mr. Assange’s case has dragged on for too long.”

The prime minister expressed his gratitude to the U.S. and U.K. governments for helping secure Assange’s release.

The plea deal resolves a drawn-out international fight to prosecute Assange that has been underway since sensitive U.S. military documents, war logs and diplomatic cables were publicly leaked in 2010 and 2011, including footage of a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad a few years earlier.

In one of the largest breaches of state secrets in U.S. history, Assange was accused of assisting Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in obtaining around 750,000 classified or sensitive documents. Manning was convicted of leaking classified material in 2013, but then-President Barack Obama commuted her 35-year prison sentence in 2017.

Assange and Manning unlawfully conspired “to receive and obtain documents, writings, and notes connected with the national defense, including such materials classified up to the SECRET level,” according to a four-page filing by the Justice Department.

Espionage Act

While Assange will avoid a lengthy prison sentence, Wikileaks is raising funds on his behalf to cover what it says is an additional “half a million U.S. dollars” he must pay.

The U.S. criminally charged Assange in 2019 during the Trump administration with violating the Espionage Act and was seeking to extradite him from the U.K. The initial charges — 17 related to espionage and one to computer misuse — carried a maximum penalty of 175 years in prison if he was found guilty on all counts, although sentences for federal crimes are typically less than that.

But the U.S. charges came years after a Swedish investigation into allegations of sexual assault, which led to his being detained in 2010 in London. Assange said the Swedish case was politically motivated and after months of fighting extradition while on bail fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Those charges were dropped in 2017, but Assange remained in a small apartment in the embassy as he continued to dodge U.K. police and American prosecutors.

Ecuador dropped his asylum status in 2019, leading to his dramatic arrest early in April of that year. That kicked off his incarceration in London’s Belmarsh prison and another five years of legal wrangling as he fought the U.S. charges before the current deal was hammered out.

With assistance from Chris Strohm.

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