Australian whistleblower and founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange is now a “free man” for American justice, following an agreement which ends on Wednesday a legal saga of nearly 14 years. “You will be able to walk out of this courtroom a free man,” Judge Ramona V. Manglona said at the end of a quick hearing in the U.S. federal court in Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands.
“I encouraged my source”
Julien Assange will not, however, have the right to return to the United States without authorization, the American Department of Justice said in a press release. In accordance with an agreement reached with the courts, the 52-year-old former computer scientist, accused of having published hundreds of thousands of confidential American documents in the 2010s, pleaded guilty to obtaining and disclosing information on the National Defense.
“I encouraged my source”, the American soldier Chelsea Manning, at the origin of this massive leak, “to provide material which was classified”, admitted on Wednesday a tired but visibly relaxed Julian Assange on the stand.
Dressed in a black suit and an ocher tie, with his hair slicked back, Assange took his two lawyers in his arms and signed a book for one of his supporters, noted an AFP journalist. He then left the court in full view of the cameras, without making a statement. “Today is a historic day. It puts an end to 14 years of legal battles,” said one of his lawyers, Jennifer Robinson.
“The work of WikiLeaks will continue”
Julian Assange “suffered enormously in his fight for freedom of expression, freedom of the press,” said Barry Pollack, his other lawyer. “We firmly believe that he should never have been charged under the Espionage Act,” he added. “The work of WikiLeaks will continue and Julien Assange, I have no doubt, will vigorously continue his fight for freedom of expression and transparency.”
The whistleblower left the United Kingdom on Monday, where he had been imprisoned for five years, to be tried before the federal court in Saipan, after having accepted the principle of a guilty plea. Under the terms of this agreement, he was only prosecuted for the sole charge of “conspiracy to obtain and disclose information relating to national defense”. He was sentenced to 62 months in prison already covered by the five years served in pre-trial detention.