After his arrival in Canberra, PM Antony Albanese who welcomed the plea deal also welcomed Julian Assange back to Australia. “I was pleased to speak with Julian Assange to welcome him home to his family in Australia,” the Australian PM said on X.
Express discontent over the issue being not expedited and no proceeding further for long, the Australian PM thanked the US and UK for making his return a possibility now.
“I want to express my appreciation to the United States and the United Kingdom for their efforts in making this possible. As Prime Minister, I have been clear – regardless of what you think of his activities, Assange’s case had dragged on for too long.
This is the culmination of careful, patient and determined work, he said.
In the US court in in the Northern Mariana Islands, a Pacific US territory, Assange admitted to revealing US defence secrets in a deal that unlocked the door to his London prison cell. And as a result, Julian Assange was banned from returning to the United States without permission, according to theUS justice department.
“Opposition to traveling to the continental United States” and that the Pacific territory is close to his home country of Australia,” to which we expect he will return at the conclusion of proceedings, “the US department of justice stated in a letter to the chief judge of the district Court.
Assange pleaded guilty to “conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information relating to the national defense of the United States” and was sentenced to five years and two months in prison, with credit for time already served in Britain.
After the plea deal, the Australian PM welcomed the development, while also stressing on the senstivity of the proceedings to be respected.
“This is a welcome development, but we recognise as well that these proceedings are sensitive and should be respected,” Australia’s PM Antony Albanese said.
“Given those proceedings that are happening literally in real time, it isn’t appropriate to provide further commentary,” he added.
However, US prosecutors have argued that his actions recklessly endangered the country’s national security.
The plea agreement, reached with prosecutors from the Justice department, ensures his release and brings an end to a prolonged legal battle that sparked contentious debates surrounding press freedom and national security concerns.
“Guilty to the information,” Assange said later to the judge during the proceedings that whether he is satisfied “depends on the outcome of the hearing”.
In April 2010, WikiLeaks published a video depicting a US helicopter attack in Baghdad from 2007, which resulted in the deaths of twelve individuals, including two journalists.
The release of the classified video led to the arrest of Bradley Manning, a US military specialist, in June.
Subsequently, in July, WikiLeaks disclosed over 91,000 documents, primarily consisting of confidential US military reports pertaining to the war in Afghanistan. This was followed by the release of approximately 400,000 classified US military files in October, which detailed the Iraq war from 2004 to 2009.
