Julian Assange freed after plea deal ends years of legal drama
A US judge freed Julian Assange on Wednesday as part of a plea deal that concluded years of legal battles for the WikiLeaks founder, who had long been sought by Washington for revealing military secrets.
"With this pronouncement, it appears that you will be able to walk out of this courtroom a free man," said the judge during a court session in the Northern Mariana Islands, a Pacific US territory.
Assange had pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defense information, AFP reporters inside the court said.
"Working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide material that was said to be classified," the 52-year-old, dressed in a black suit with a brown tie and his hair slicked back, told the court.
Assange, who from 2010 published hundreds of thousands of secret US documents as head of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, was released Monday from a high-security British prison.
The judge on Wednesday sentenced him to five years and two months in prison, with credit for the same amount of time he spent behind bars in Britain while fighting extradition to the United States.
Looking tired but relaxed, Assange shared a brief laugh with Kevin Rudd, the Australian ambassador to the United States, during a break in proceedings.
Journalists and curious locals, several in colorful Hawaiian shirts, packed the small courtroom. One Saipan resident told AFP he had come to "see the main event."
The Northern Mariana Islands was chosen due to Assange's reluctance to go to the continental United States and because of its proximity to Australia, a court filing said.
After the hearing, Assange will fly to Canberra in Australia, WikiLeaks announced on social media platform X, adding that the plea bargain "should never have had to happen."
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese welcomed the plea deal, noting that Assange's case had "dragged on for too long" with "nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration."