The archipelago is named after the Queen Regent of Spain where Assange has become a free man

Starring in a judicial (and geopolitical) soap opera Julian Assange ended up on a remote island South Pacific Media rocked by earthquake highlighting freedom of the founder of Wikileaks After 14 years of legal battles, dozens of British and American journalists disrupted the general parsimony prevailing there Northern Mariana Islandsarea of USA Which is located more than 9,000 kilometers from the American west coast.

in the federal court of SaipanThe capital of this archipelago of 14 islands, this Wednesday, held a hearing where Assange pleaded guilty to violating US espionage laws. In the wood-paneled courtroom, Judge Ramona Manglona asked the Australian activist to explain in detail the agreement he had reached with the United States government by which he would be able to regain his freedom and meet Australia with his family.

Assange, 52, in front of a packed room and backed by former Australian prime minister Kevin RuddThe current Australian ambassador to the United States assured that, in his work as a journalist, he had encouraged one of his sources to provide him with classified information and he acknowledged that this constituted the crime of espionage, admitting that he was guilty of it.

Manglona accepted the terms of the plea agreement and gave Assange credit for the nearly five years he had already served in prison. United Kingdomconfirmed his freedom. The judge said, “You will be able to leave this courtroom a free man.” Assange, who did not make any statement while leaving the court, headed straight to the airport to board a plane Canberra,

The Northern Mariana Islands, marked by a long history of conquests and wars, have been the last stop in a legal saga that traveled around the world through the United States, Australia, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Ecuador.

After 12 years in total, he was placed in the Ecuadorian embassy london And in a British maximum-security prison, the controversial face of a website that brought to light classified documents on US military war crimes. Afghanistan and SyriaHe is now a free man.

Assange did not want to set foot on the US mainland and the paradisiacal Northern Mariana Islands, home to about 50,000 people, were the ideal place to hold the hearings due to their greater proximity (3,000 kilometres) to Australia. On Wednesday there were many spotlights on some of the islands, which, over the centuries, have passed through Spanish, German and Japanese hands before the UN decision. second World Warwhich would be the territory of the United States.

He was the discoverer Ferdinand Magellan And his crew encountered the Chamorros – a people of sailors and fishermen – who inhabited these islands in 1521 while they were sailing to Spain, claiming the archipelago for Spain. Spice Islands (Indonesia),

decades later they would be involved in East Indies As an outpost of the Philippine colony and a port of call in the Spanish galleon trade Manila and Mexico. In 1668 it was renamed to its current name in his honor Marie Anne of Austriathe second wife of King Philip IV and the mother of Charles IIThen Queen Regent of Spain.

A year after Spain’s defeat in the Spanish–American War (1898), the Mariana Islands were sold GermanyWho administered the region until it was lost to Japan after the outbreak of First world war. During World War II, one of the islands, TinianBecame the base for the B-29 planes that dropped the atomic bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki.After the end of the war, the Marianas remained under the supervision of the United Nations and the Washington administration, although they did not formally join the United States until the late 20th century.