After admitting he leaked US defence secrets, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned home to Australia on Wednesday .
Assange landed on a chilly Canberra evening in a private jet, the final act of an international drama that led him from a five-year stretch in the high-security Belmarsh prison in Britain to a courtroom in a US Pacific island territory and, finally, home.
His white hair swept back, the Australian raised a fist as he emerged from the plane door, striding across the tarmac to give a hug to his wife Stella that lifted her off the ground, and then to embrace his father.
Dozens of television journalists, photographers and reporters peered through the airport fencing to see Assange, who wore a dark suit, white shirt and brown tie.
WikiLeaks said on X that it would hold a press conference in the Australian capital at 9:15pm local time on Wednesday, but did not say if Assange would be present.
“He will be able to spend quality time with his wife Stella, and his two children, be able to walk up and down on the beach and feel the sand through his toes in winter -- that lovely chill,” said Assange’s father, John Shipton.
Assange’s long battle with US prosecutors came to an unexpected end in the Northern Mariana Islands where a judge accepted his guilty plea on a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defence information.
The remote courtroom was chosen because of the 52-year-old’s unwillingness to go to the continental United States and because of its proximity to Australia.
‘A free man’
As part of a behind-the-scenes legal negotiation with the US Justice Department he was sentenced to the time he had already served in London -- five years and two months -- and given his liberty.
“You will be able to walk out of this courtroom a free man,” the judge told him.
Assange had published hundreds of thousands of confidential US documents on the whistleblowing website from 2010.
He became a hero to free speech campaigners but a villain to those who thought he endangered US security and intelligence sources.
“Working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide material that was said to be classified,” Assange told the court.
Assange’s lawyer Jen Robinson told reporters it was a “historic day” that “brings to an end 14 years of legal battles.”
“It also brings to an end a case which has been recognized as the greatest threat to the First Amendment in the 21st century,” she said.
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