Sydney, Australia, Jun 26 (EFE).- Julian Assange left the Mariana Islands for his native Australia Wednesday after being declared a free man by a United States judge, after pleading guilty to violating the espionage law as part of an agreement with the justice department.
Charter flight VJT199 departed Saipan, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean, at about 12:10pm local time on Wednesday (2:10am GMT) and is scheduled to land in Canberra shortly before 7pm local time (9:00 GMT), according to flight tracking site Flightradar.
Assange is expected to hold a press conference once he lands in Canberra.
“With this ruling it appears that he will be able to walk out of this courtroom a free man. I hope this will help to restore some peace,” said Judge Ramona Villagomez Manglona of the US federal court for the Northern Mariana Islands in Saipan, in handing down the sentence. where the hearing was held Wednesday.
The judge said she accepted the terms agreed between the justice department and Assange’s defense and, in accordance with that agreement, sentenced him to 62 months in prison. She took into account the time already served in the high-security Belmarsh prison in the United Kingdom, so he will automatically be released.
The crime to which Assange pleaded guilty, for conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US documents, carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, but thanks to the plea agreement he will avoid spending more time in prison.
Assange was convicted of a single criminal charge of conspiracy to obtain and disclose classified US documents, related to the largest leak in the country’s history in 2010, which included almost 500,000 documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The hearing was held without television cameras.
The Australian’s defense requested that the hearing be held on these islands due to its proximity to Australia and because Assange did not wish to travel to the continental US. EFE wat-bpm-pav/lds