Julian Assange pleads guilty to espionage charge, ending 14-year legal battle

June 25 (UPI) -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty Wednesday to a single espionage conspiracy charge inside a courtroom in the U.S. Mariana Islands to become a free man following a 14-year legal battle. The plea deal allowed Assange to be sentenced to time served before returning to his home country of Australia.

Assange, 52, wore a black suit, white shirt and a copper-colored tie with his white hair slicked back as he entered the Saipan courtroom with his attorney Barry Pollack and Australian Ambassador to the United States Kevin Rudd.

Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona asked the reason for holding the hearing in Saipan, to which U.S. attorney Matthew McKenzie noted the proximity to Assange's home in Australia where he would travel "shortly after this proceeding."

As he pleaded guilty, Assange told the judge he had waived his right to indictment by a grand jury.

"Not every case goes this fast," Manglona quipped, before asking Assange if he was happy with the process.

"That might depend on the outcome of the hearing," Assange joked.

Assange flew out of London's Stansted Airport late Monday afternoon bound for Bangkok straight from Belmarsh Prison in south London, where he had been held since April 2019 pending extradition, after being granted bail by the High Court, said WikiLeaks in a post on X.

"This is for everyone who worked for his freedom: thank you," said the media NGO Assange founded in 2006 alongside of video of him boarding an aircraft.

Speaking from Sydney, Assange's wife, Stella Assange, told BBC Radio she was "elated" and that her husband had been "on a layover in Bangkok" and was flying onto the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory, where he appeared before a judge to fulfill a plea deal he had signed with the U.S. Department of Justice.

She said he would then fly on to Australia in preparation to settle down and begin their new life together as a family with their two children.

A letter from the Justice Department's National Security Division to the chief judge of the islands' U.S. District Court provided notice of an expedited single-day hearing in Saipan scheduled for Wednesday morning in which Assange pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring with Chelsea Manning to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information relating to the national defense of the United States.

Thanking the judge for her cooperation in accommodating the plea and sentencing proceedings in a single sitting which it said was agreed in the light of Assange's opposition to traveling to the continental United States and the proximity of the islands to his native Australia "to which we expect he will return at the conclusion of the proceedings."

The letter was accompanied by a four-page criminal information docket.

Speaking in parliament, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the proceedings in the Northern Mariana Islands, 3,000 miles away, were the result of "delicate" diplomatic engagement, both before and since he came into office in May 2022.

"While this is a welcome development, we recognize that these proceedings are both crucial and they're delicate," he said in a post on X.

"The Australian Government has consistently said that Mr. Assange's case has dragged on for too long, and that there is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration. We want him brought home to Australia."

The deal brings to a close a 14-year battle over the leaking by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic cables and military files with the help of former U.S. Army intelligence whistleblower Manning that Washington said had compromised national security, put the lives of U.S. operatives at risk and caused embarrassment.

Assange has always insisted that he was engaged in legitimate journalism and had done nothing wrong.

After Sweden asked Britain to extradite Assange on rape charges, in 2012 he sought and was granted political asylum by Ecuador on grounds Sweden would extradite him to the United States. He spent seven years in its embassy in London beyond the reach of British authorities before being arrested in April 2019 after Ecuador revoked his status.

Assange has spent the past five years in a high-security prison in London from where he has fought a tooth-and-nail battle in Britain's courts against a U.S. extradition warrant, which he and his legal team argued would amount to a death sentence, citing a 2020 suicide attempt by Manning as proof of the harsh conditions he would be subjected to if incarcerated in the United States.

Manning was detained in 2010 and eventually court-martialed, convicted in a military court in 2013 and sentenced to 35 years in prison. She was freed in January 2017 after then-President Obama commuted her sentence.

Manning was re-imprisoned in 2019 on contempt of court charges over her refusal to testify to a grand jury, likely against Assange amid the United States' bid to extradite him, spending a year in and out of jail until the grand jury was dismissed in March 2020, a day after her suicide attempt.