Julian Assange returns home to Australia after 14 years, hugs wife, father
Julian Assange disembarked from a private jet at Canberra airport, waving to the media before passionately kissing his wife, Stella, and lifting her off the ground.
- Julian Assange returns to Australia after legal battles
- Received by wife, father, and followers at Canberra airport
- Supporters hail him as a hero for promoting free speech and exposing war crimes
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned home to Australia on Wednesday after 14 years of legal battle. He was received by his wife, father and scores of his followers to a rousing welcome.
A video showed Assange disembarking from a private jet at Canberra airport, waving to the media before passionately kissing his wife, Stella, and lifting her off the ground. He then embraced his father, John Shipton, before entering the terminal building with his legal team
Earlier in the day, Assange walked out of a US District Court in Saipan as a free man after he pleaded guilty to a single count of violating US espionage law. As part of the deal, Assange will be required to destroy information provided to WikiLeaks. He is expected to receive a sentence of five years and two months, with credit for the time he spent in a British prison fighting extradition.
In his long legal battle, Assange spent more than five years in a British high-security jail and seven years in asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy in London battling extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations and to the US, where he faced 18 criminal charges.
The charges stemmed from WikiLeaks’ release in 2010 of hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents on Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
During a three-hour hearing held earlier in the US territory of Saipan, Assange pleaded guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified national defence documents but said he had believed the US Constitution’s First Amendment, which protects free speech, shielded his activities.
Assange’s UK and Australian lawyer Jennifer Robinson thanked the Australian government for securing Assange’s release.
