Julian Assange has been banned indefinitely from entering the United States after pleading guilty to felony espionage.
The founder of WikiLeaks has just been released without parole or supervision following a hearing in a US federal court on the Pacific island of Saipan.
The United States Department of Justice issued a lengthy statement detailing Assange’s crimes, announcing his guilty plea and his ban from returning to the country.
“Under the plea agreement, Assange is prohibited from returning to the United States without permission,” he said.
“The guilty plea concludes a criminal matter dating back to March 2018, when Assange was first charged in the Eastern District of Virginia.”
Julian Assange has walked free from court and is flying home to Australia after pleading guilty to a single count of espionage.
Assange greets the many supporters who cheered him after he left the court.
That plea deal with U.S. prosecutors paved the way for him to return home without fear of arrest after 14 years as a wanted crime suspect.
Assange had been wanted for espionage since 2010, after WikiLeaks published thousands of classified US military documents, and for unrelated rape charges in Sweden.
He fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London in June 2012 when he lost his appeal against extradition to Sweden, and spent seven years hiding there until he was expelled and locked up in a maximum security prison since April 2019.
The Justice Department detailed how Assange conspired with US military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to illegally acquire and disseminate the documents.
“Starting in late 2009, Assange and WikiLeaks actively requested classified information from the United States, including by publishing a list of most wanted leaks that sought, among other things, classified documents en masse,” he said.
Assange recruited people who had access to classified material, along with hackers who could break into computer systems and steal it.
He publicly encouraged them to obtain classified material “by any means necessary,” including theft, and hand it over to him.
The Justice Department detailed how Assange conspired with US military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning (pictured last year after his release) to illegally acquire and disseminate the documents.
Manning was one of these recruits and between January and May 2010 he downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents and reports.
“Many of them were classified at the secret level and related to national defense, which meant that unauthorized disclosure could cause serious harm to the national security of the United States,” the Justice Department said.
The files included 90,000 significant activity reports related to the war in Afghanistan, 400,000 from Iraq, 800 detainee assessment reports from Joint Task Force Guantanamo and 250,000 cables from the US State Department.
Other files were rules of engagement for the Iraq war that defined the “circumstances and limitations” under which the U.S. military could attack enemy forces.
Assange and Manning communicated frequently online and he pressured her to find and send more documents.
When Manning told him “that’s (sic) all I really have left,” he replied “in my experience, curious eyes never dry out.”
After receiving the files, Assange published most of them on WikiLeaks: 75,000 documents from the Afghan war, 400,000 from the Iraq war files, 100,000 from the State Department documents, and all of the Guantanamo detainee reports.
“Unlike news organizations that published redacted versions of some of the classified documents… Assange and WikiLeaks disclosed many of the raw classified documents without removing any personally identifiable information,” the Justice Department said.
Assange’s journey from London to Saipan, where he appeared in court, and his planned flight to Canberra, the Austrian capital, after the hearing.
The plane carrying Assange to Canberra takes off from Saipan
‘In many cases, the classified documents… (were) in an unredacted or unredacted format that placed people who had assisted the United States government at great personal risk.
“Assange’s decision to reveal the names of human sources illegally shared with him by Manning created a serious and imminent risk to human life.”
The Justice Department said some of the information came from journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates and political dissidents who provided it to the United States confidentially “at significant risk to their own safety.”
“By making these documents public without redacting the names of human sources or other identifying information, Assange subjected these individuals to serious harm and arbitrary detention,” he said.
The statement said Assange acknowledged in public statements that he knew doing this could put those people at risk of harm.
Assange and his lawyers maintain that WikiLeaks’ release of the documents caused no harm, even in statements after the brief hearing.
Manning was sentenced to decades in prison for sending the documents to Assange, but her sentence was commuted by then-US President Barrack Obama and she walked free after just seven years behind bars.
Assange has been wanted since 2010, when the documents were released, the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history.
In June 2012, as authorities closed in on him over that and “credible and reliable” sexual crime allegations from a woman in Sweden, he fled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he remained for seven years in often ridiculous circumstances.
Manning was sentenced to decades in prison for sending the documents to Assange, but her sentence was commuted by then-US President Barrack Obama and she walked free after just seven years behind bars.
Ecuador eventually tired of him being there, revoked his asylum and kicked him out, resulting in his immediate arrest and imprisonment in the United Kingdom while fighting extradition to the United States.
After five years of court battles, and as Assange approached Manning’s time in prison, the United States negotiated a plea deal.
Assange refused to set foot on the US mainland for fear of arrest, instead facing a court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific near his native Australia.
Judge Ramona V Manglona accepted his guilty plea and debated whether to fine Assange up to $150,000 or order probation or supervised release.
After discussions with Assange’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, and federal prosecutor Matthew McKenzie, he decided against it and let him walk a free man.
You will be able to leave this room a free man. I hope some peace is restored,’ Manglona declared.
“Given the factual basis that explains the entire saga of events that forms the basis of this very serious espionage accusation against you… in fact, I am sentencing you to a period of time served,” he said.
“I’m not imposing any period of supervised release.”
The judge noted that the island would soon celebrate 80 years of its own freedom.
“Now there is some peace you must regain with yourself when you go out and continue your life as a free man,” he said.
After falling out with the South American nation’s rulers, he was dragged from his safe haven in 2019 and locked up in Belmarsh while the United States attempted to extradite him.
Assange has been held in one of the UK’s highest security prisons since April 2019. He is pictured in May 2019.
An emotional Assange could barely speak as he said “I accept” when asked if he understood the details of the deal.
US prosecutor Matthew McKenzie later said the US would withdraw its request for Assange’s extradition to the UK.
Moments later, Assange walked off the pitch to loud applause from his supporters, waving at them but saying nothing before getting into a waiting car.
He was taken directly to the airport, where he flew on flight VJT199, which took off at 1:00 pm Wednesday local time.
Assange will land in Canberra, Australia, at 7:39 p.m. local time, where he will be reunited with his wife Stella and their two children.
