Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, entered into a plea deal on Tuesday that marked the end of a decade-long ordeal. This period began with self-imposed exile at the Ecuadorean embassy in London and concluded with imprisonment. Assange pleaded guilty to a single count of obtaining and illegally disclosing national security information.
This week, the now 52-year-old Assange flew from London to a US court in Saipan, the capital of the US Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. There, in a brief legal proceeding largely out of public view, he entered his guilty plea. Wearing a black suit, Assange answered questions from US District Judge Ramona Manglona.
Assange defended his actions as those of a journalist seeking constitutionally protected information. Despite his belief that the First Amendment and the Espionage Act are contradictory and the latter is ill-conceived, he acknowledged the difficulty of prevailing in his case under the circumstances.
Judge Manglona sentenced him to the time already spent at Belmarsh Prison in Britain. Subsequently, he was allowed to return to Australia immediately. Upon arrival in Canberra, he is expected to reimburse the Australian government for his charter flight home, estimated at about $520,000, a process he previously hinted would be crowdfunded.
Assange was welcomed back to Australia by family members, politicians, and supporters. Among them was Kevin Rudd, Australia’s ambassador to the United States, who attended Assange’s court appearance in Saipan. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also advocated for his release.
Assange’s career began during his teenage years, where he gained notoriety as a bold hacker. By his late teens, he boasted of being Australia’s greatest hacker, breaching numerous systems including those of the Pentagon. Under the alias Mendax, he adopted the motto “splendide mendax,” meaning “brilliantly untruthful” in Latin.
Assange aimed to make information hidden from the public by governments and corporations accessible without causing destruction. This mission propelled him and a group of hackers to target the US military-industrial complex in the early 1990s.
In 1994, Assange faced serious legal trouble when charged with 31 counts of hacking into Telecom Australia servers, carrying a potential sentence of up to 290 years in prison, which plunged him into deep depression.
Ultimately, he pleaded guilty to all charges, avoiding jail time—a lesson that strengthened his resolve to combat what he viewed as organizations lethal to human freedom, beginning with the US National Security Agency.
In 2006, Assange co-founded WikiLeaks with others, aiming to expose powerful entities in both private and public sectors. Assange likened himself to a cyber Robin Hood, liberating “persecuted documents” from secrecy.
Collaborating with traditional news organizations, WikiLeaks gained attention by exposing issues such as extrajudicial killings in Kenya, repression in China, and potential corruption in the US and Peru.
Assange’s relentless efforts brought him into the global spotlight. He travelled extensively to recruit volunteers, court whistleblowers, and promote transparency. Over time, his focus increasingly targeted the United States. WikiLeaks published extensive data on American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as classified diplomatic cables.
During the 2016 US presidential campaign, WikiLeaks released thousands of emails obtained from the Democratic National Committee by a hacker, leading to embarrassing revelations for the party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Such activities eventually led to legal trouble. In 2010, Swedish authorities charged Assange with sexual assault, allegations he denied, claiming they were a pretext to extradite him to the United States. Seeking asylum, he lived in a small room at the Ecuadorean embassy in London for years.
In 2019, Assange faced an eighteen-count indictment from a US federal grand jury over WikiLeaks’ publication of national security documents, mostly from Chelsea Manning, a former US Army intelligence analyst.
Assange was granted asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy until 2019, when British police arrested him and later detained him in Belmarsh Prison. There, he spent about 23 hours a day in a cell, with limited contact and activities. Concerns grew about his deteriorating mental and physical health.
The plea deal concluded in a closed bail hearing in London, determining the terms of his agreement. While some supporters were disappointed that Assange pleaded guilty, he himself appeared relieved to avoid further imprisonment by admitting to only one count of violating the Espionage Act in a remote US courtroom.
