People attend an event celebrating news of the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, at the British Consulate in Melbourne, Australia, on June 25.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/Reuters
The wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has thanked supporters around the world for helping win his freedom and said the priority for him now is “to get healthy again.”
Mr. Assange was released from a British prison on Monday where he had been held for more than five years while fighting extradition to the United States to face espionage charges.
Under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, Mr. Assange pleaded guilty to one charge on Wednesday before a judge in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific Ocean. He is expected to receive a five-year jail sentence. However, prosecutors have agreed that he will be given credit for time served in Britain, meaning he could be freed after the hearing.
In an interview with the BBC on Tuesday, Stella Assange said the family will reunite in Australia where Mr. Assange holds citizenship. “Frankly it’s just incredible, it feels like it’s not real,” said Ms. Assange, who flew to Sydney from London on Sunday with their two sons, ages five and seven. “I’m just so emotional now, but this is finally over.”
She has yet to tell their children their father will be freed. “All I told them was that there was a big surprise on the morning that we left,” she said. “We’ve been very careful because obviously no one can stop a five and a seven-year-old from, you know, shouting it from the rooftops at any given moment. And because of the sensitivity around the judge having to sign off the deal we’ve been very careful, just gradually, incrementally telling them information.”
Ms. Assange said the children have never seen their father outside of prison. “All their interactions with Julian have been in a single visitors’ room inside Belmarsh Prison. It’s always been for a little more than an hour at a time.”
In a post on X, she thanked all of those who have supported Mr. Assange. “Words cannot express our immense gratitude to you – yes you, who have all mobilized for years and years to make this come true.”
The family plans to settle in Australia and spend time reconnecting, she added. They want “to have time and privacy and just start this new chapter.”
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has long been advocating for Mr. Assange’s release and return to Australia. On Tuesday, he told the country’s parliament that the government had provided consular assistance to Mr. Assange and that Australia’s High Commissioner to Britain had travelled with him to the Northern Mariana Islands.
“I have been a very clear as both the labour leader in opposition but also as Prime Minister that regardless of the views that people have about Julian Assange and his activities, the case has dragged on for too long. There is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia,” Mr. Albanese told MPs.
The plea agreement came a month after a panel of British judges ruled that Mr. Assange could appeal an extradition order that would have returned him to the U.S. to be tried.
U.S. prosecutors have charged Mr. Assange, 52, with computer hacking and 18 violations of the Espionage Act, a century-old law that prohibits anyone from unlawfully obtaining and publishing information relating to national defence. If convicted, he could have faced up to 175 years in jail.
All the charges against Mr. Assange related to the publication by WikiLeaks of more than 250,000 secret military cables, reports and briefing notes in 2010 and 2011. The material exposed atrocities by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq and led to an outcry over American foreign policy.
His supporters have argued that the case threatened all journalists because it criminalized the publication of information that incriminated government actions.
Lawyers representing the U.S. government said the case was not about press freedom and that Mr. Assange put lives in danger by publicizing the names of sources.
British courts deemed Mr. Assange a flight risk and he had been held in Belmarsh Prison ever since his U.S. indictment in 2019. Before that, he claimed asylum and spent seven years in the Ecuadorean embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he was being investigated over allegations of sexual assault. The case was eventually dropped, but Mr. Assange was jailed in Britain for skipping bail and then held after U.S. prosecutors filed charges.
Former army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was given a 35-year sentence in 2010 for leaking the documents to Mr. Assange. Her sentence was commuted in 2017 by former president Barack Obama, who called the punishment disproportionate.
Earlier this year, U.S. President Joe Biden said he was considering Australia’s request to drop the charges and allow Mr. Assange to return to Australia.