PeakNews Online
SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pleaded guilty to a single felony charge for obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that secures his liberty and concludes a drawn-out legal saga that raised divisive questions about press freedom and national security.
The plea was entered Wednesday morning in federal court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, an American commonwealth in the Pacific that accommodated Assange’s desire to avoid entering the continental United States.
Addressing the court, Assange said that he believed the Espionage Act under which he charged contradicted First Amendment rights but that he accepted that encouraging sources to provide classified information for publication can be unlawful.
Though the deal with prosecutors required him to admit guilt to a single felony count, it would also permit him to return to his native Australia without spending any time in an American prison. He had been jailed in the United Kingdom for the last five years, 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.
The abrupt conclusion enables both sides to claim a degree of victory, with the Justice Department 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. WikiLeaks, the secret-spilling website that Assange founded in 2006, applauded the announcement of the deal, saying it was grateful for “all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.”
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 United Kingdom accompanied Assange on the flight
