A judge in the United States territory of the Northern Mariana Islands has pronounced a sentence against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange AssangeHe was allowed to return to his native Australia as a free man” after he pleaded guilty to violating the Espionage Americans as part of a agreement with the Department of Justice.
“With this verdict it seems he will be able to leave this courtroom as a free man. I hope this will restore some peace,” Judge Ramona Villagomez Manglona said when handing down the sentence.
The judge 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, but gave him credit for the time he spent in Belmarsh high-security prison. (United Kingdom), so is automatically released,
The cyberactivist will soon be able to return to his home in Australia, 14 years after he was arrested in 2010 for the biggest leak of classified documents in US history.
Guilty plea It took place without television cameras in a US federal courtroom on the island of Saipan, the capital of the US territory of the Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
The offences to which Assange has pleaded guilty include conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US documents Maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000But the plea agreement will allow him to avoid spending more time in prison.
Upon being sentenced, Assange, who had kept a calm face throughout the hearing, became a little emotional when the judge said, “It looks like this case ends with me right here on Saipan,” according to the British newspaper. Guardian,
According to a letter sent to the court by the US Justice Department, the cyberactivist’s presence in the Mariana Islands was due to Assange’s opposition to traveling to the continental United States and the court’s proximity to Australia.
However, Assange has also committed several acts of rebellion, which have revived tensions between central aspects of the case, freedom of the press and national security.
On two occasions, when the judge asked him how he responded to the allegations, the Australian replied: “guilty of information”An unusual statement for these processes, according to Guardian And Sydney Morning Herald,
In addition, the WikiLeaks founder has defended his journalistic work, arguing that it should be protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which protects freedom of the press and, in his opinion, contradicts the Espionage Act of 1917. Which was denounced.
After the hearing, his lawyers held a brief press conference outside the courthouse and his attorney Jennifer Robinson said that this type of process “set a dangerous precedent” that “should worry journalists everywhere”,
In its account on the social network
As a curiosity, the private plane he travels in achieved global notoriety for carrying Taylor Swift from Tokyo to the United States for the Super Bowl in February.
The plea deal marks the end of a legal saga in which Assange spent more than five years in a high-security British prison and seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London while facing sex crimes charges in Sweden and fighting his extradition to the United States.
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