Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, pleaded guilty to violating US spy rules in a deal that frees him from a 14-year legal battle on Wednesday, and he was given an ecstatic welcome in Australia.
Assange jumped out of a private jet at Canberra airport just after 7.30pm ( local time ), waving to awaiting media and cheering supporters, before passionately kissing his wife Stella and kicking her off the ground. Before joining his legal team in the terminal tower, he embraced his father.
Assange has not spoken officially since being released, and she did not speak at a press conference held by Wikileaks in Canberra. Stella said it was too soon to speculate about what her father would do next. ” Julian needs time to recover, to get used to freedom”, she said. I want Julian to have the freedom to recover it.
According to Assange’s attorney Jennifer Robinson, Assange claimed in a telephone call from the cash Canberra’s airport runway that American government involvement in the US prosecutors had saved his life.
Assange’s introduction brings an end to a story that saw him fight extradition to Sweden on sexual abuse claims and to the US, where he faced 18 criminal charges, for more than five years in a high-security prison in the UK and seven years in prison at the Ecuadorean embassy in London. One of the largest intrusions of key information in US history occurred when WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of classified US defense records in 2010 about Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Assange admitted guilt to one legal matter of conspiring to receive and share defined national defense documents during a three-hour hearing held earlier in the US territory of Saipan. He defended his steps, describing himself as a blogger seeking information from sources, which he claimed was both legal and democratically protected. He said,” I think the First Amendment and the Espionage Act are in conflict,” but I also acknowledge that it would be challenging to get a case in such a way given the circumstances.
Asked if Assange may return to publication, Stella did never rule out the possibility. She said he” will often defend human rights, will often protect subjects”. Another of his lawyers, Barry Pollack, expected his customer may remain vocal campaigning:” WikiLeaks’s labor did continue”.
