WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that secured his liberty and concluded a drawn-out legal saga that raised divisive questions about press freedom and national security.

The criminal case of international intrigue, which had played out for years in major world stages of Washington and London, came to a surprise ending in a most unusual setting with Mr. Assange, 52, entering his plea on June 26 morning in federal court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands. The American commonwealth in the Pacific is relatively close to Mr. Assange’s native Australia and accommodated his desire to avoid entering the continental United States.

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The deal required the iconoclastic internet publisher to admit guilt to a single felony count but also permitted him to return to Australia without any time in an American prison. The judge sentenced him to the five years he’d already spent behind bars in the United Kingdom, fighting extradition to the United States on an Espionage Act indictment that could have carried a lengthy prison sentence in the event of a conviction. He was holed up for seven years before that in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

He smiled slightly as U.S. District Judge Ramona Manglona imposed the sentence, pronouncing him a “free man.”

The conclusion enables both sides to claim a degree of satisfaction. The Justice Department, facing a defendant who had already served substantial jail time, was able to resolve — without trial — a case that raised thorny legal issues and that might never have reached a jury at all given the plodding pace of the extradition process. Mr. Assange, for his part, signalled begrudging contentment with the resolution, saying in court that though he believed the Espionage Act contradicted the First Amendment, he accepted the consequences of soliciting classified information from sources for publication.

Jennifer Robinson, one of Mr. Assange’s lawyers, told reporters after the hearing that the case “sets a dangerous precedent that should be a concern to journalists everywhere.”

“It’s a huge relief to Julian Assange, to his family, to his friends, to his supporters and to us — to everyone who believes in free speech around the world — that he can now return home to Australia and be reunited with his family,” she said.

Mr. Assange arrived at court in a dark suit, with a tie loosened around the collar, after flying from Britain on a charter plane accompanied by members of his legal team and Australian officials, including the top Australian diplomat in the U.K.

Inside the courthouse, he answered basic questions from Manglona, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and appeared to listen intently as terms of the deal were discussed.

He appeared upbeat and relaxed during the hearing, at times cracking jokes with the judge. While signing his plea agreement, he made a joke about the 9-hour time difference between the U.K. and Saipan. At another point, when the judge asked him whether he was satisfied with the plea conditions, Assange responded: “It might depend on the outcome,” sparking some laughter in the courtroom.

“So far, so good,” the judge responded.

The plea deal, disclosed on June 24 night in a sparsely detailed Justice Department letter, represents the latest — and presumably final — chapter in a court fight involving the eccentric Australian computer expert who has been celebrated by supporters as a transparency crusader but lambasted by national security hawks who insist that his conduct put lives at risks and strayed far beyond the bounds of traditional journalism duties.

The criminal case brought by the Trump administration Justice Department centers on the receipt and publication of hundreds of thousands of war logs and diplomatic cables that included details of U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Prosecutors alleged that he teamed with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain the records, including by conspiring to crack a Defense Department computer password, and published them without regard to American national security. Names of human sources who provided information to U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan were among the details exposed, prosecutors have said.

But his activities drew an outpouring of support from press freedom advocates, who heralded his role in bringing to light military conduct that might otherwise have been concealed from view and warned of a chilling effect on journalists. Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.

The indictment was unsealed in 2019, but Mr. Assange’s legal woes long predated the criminal case and continued well past it.

Weeks after the release of the largest document cache in 2010, a Swedish prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Assange based on one woman’s allegation of rape and another’s allegation of molestation. Mr. Assange has long maintained his innocence, and the investigation was later dropped.

He presented himself in 2012 to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he claimed asylum on the grounds of political persecution, and spent the following seven years in self-exile there, welcoming a parade of celebrity visitors and making periodic appearances from the building’s balcony to address supporters.

In 2019, his hosts revoked his asylum, allowing British police to arrest him. He remained locked up for the last five years while the Justice Department sought to extradite him, in a process that encountered scepticism from British judges who worried about how Mr. Assange would be treated by the U.S.

Ultimately, though, the resolution sparing Mr. Assange prison time in the U.S. contradicts years of ominous warnings by Mr. Assange and his supporters that the American criminal justice system would expose him to unduly harsh treatment, including potentially the death penalty— something prosecutors never sought.

Last month, Mr. Assange won the right to appeal an extradition order after his lawyers argued that the U.S. government provided “blatantly inadequate” assurances that he would have the same free speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from Britain.

His wife, Stella Assange, told the BBC from Australia that it had been “touch and go” over 72 hours whether the deal would go ahead but she felt “elated” at the news.

“He will be a free man once it is signed off by a judge,” she said, adding that she still didn’t think it was real.

Mr. Assange on June 24 left the London prison where he has spent the last five years after being granted bail during a secret hearing last week. He boarded a plane that landed hours later in Bangkok to refuel before taking off again toward Saipan. A video posted by WikiLeaks on X, showed Mr. Assange staring intently out the window at the blue sky as the plane headed toward the island.

“Imagine. From over 5 years in a small cell in a maximum security prison. Nearly 14 years detained in the U.K. To this,” WikiLeaks wrote.

Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was freed by a court on the US Pacific island territory of Saipan on Wednesday after pleading guilty to violating US espionage law, in a deal that will see him return home to Australia.

During the three-hour hearing, Assange pled guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defence documents but said he had believed the Constitution’s First Amendment, which protects free speech, shielded his activities.

“Working as a journalist I encouraged my source to provide information that was said to be classified in order to publish that information,” he told the court.

“I believed the First Amendment protected that activity but I accept that it was … a violation of the espionage statute.”

Chief U.S. District Judge Ramona V. Manglona accepted his guilty plea and released him due to time already served in a British jail.

Assange, 52, has left Saipan on a private jet accompanied by Australia’s ambassadors to the US and UK, according to flight logs. They will then travel to Canberra, landing just before 7 pm (0900 GMT).

Assange had agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count, according to filings in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands.

The U.S. territory in the western Pacific was chosen due to his opposition to travelling to the mainland U.S. and for its proximity to Australia, prosecutors said.

Dozens of media from around the world attended the hearing, with more gathered outside the courtroom to cover the proceedings. Media were not allowed inside the courtroom to film the hearing.

“I watch this and think how overloaded his senses must be, walking through the press scrum after years of sensory depravation and the four walls of his high-security Belmarsh prison cell,” Stella Assange, the wife of WikiLeaks founder said on social media platform X.

LONG SAGA

Australian-born Assange spent more than five years in a British high-security jail and seven holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London as he fought accusations of sex crimes in Sweden and battled extradition to the U.S., where he faced 18 criminal charges.

Assange’s supporters view him as a victim because he exposed U.S. wrongdoing and potential crimes, including in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Washington has said the release of the secret documents put lives in danger.

The Australian government has been advocating for his release and has raised the issue with the United States several times.

“This isn’t something that has happened in the last 24 hours,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told a news conference on Wednesday.

“This is something that has been considered, patient, worked through in a calibrated way, which is how Australia conducts ourselves.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

SYDNEY:

Julian Assange is en route to a courtroom on the Pacific island of Saipan where he is expected to plead guilty on Wednesday to a single criminal charge in a plea deal that will see him walk free and return home to Australia after a 14-year legal odyssey.

WHERE IS SAIPAN?

Saipan is the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands (NMI), a US commonwealth in the western Pacific which begins roughly 70 kilometers (44 miles) north of Guam and stretches across 14 islands.

Like territories such as Guam or Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands are part of the U.S. without the full status of a state. Residents are U.S. citizens but cannot vote in presidential elections. Crucially, some, like Saipan, also host U.S. district courts.

Assange will appear in court at 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday (2300 GMT Tuesday)

WHY IS ASSANGE HEADING THERE?

U.S. prosecutors said Assange wanted to go to a court close to his home in Australia but not in the continental United States.

Saipan has the advantage of being relatively close to Assange’s home in Australia, roughly 3,000 km (1800 miles) south. Hawaii is more than twice as far away.

“He has to front up to charges that have been brought under U.S. law,” said Emily Crawford, a professor at the University of Sydney’s law school.

“It had to be U.S. territory but it had to be the U.S. territory closest to Australia that wasn’t a U.S. state like Hawaii.”

SAIPAN AND THE UNITED STATES

After time as a colony of Spain, Germany and then Japan, the United States took control of the island in World War Two after the Battle of Saipan in 1944.

After decades under U.S. control, residents in 1975 voted to join the United States as a territory.

The Northern Mariana Islands elected a delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 2008, but the delegate has no vote in Congress.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

U.S. prosecutors said Assange has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defense documents. He will be sentenced to 62 months of time that he has already served. If the judge approves his plea, Assange is expected to return to Australia after the hearing, U.S. prosecutors said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)