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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has flown into Australia, landing in his home country after pleading guilty to violating US espionage law in a deal that sets him free from a 14-year legal battle. His arrival by charter jet on Wednesday night ends a saga in which Assange spent more than five years in a British high-security jail and seven years in asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London battling extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations and to the US, where he faced 18 criminal charges. During a three-hour hearing held earlier on the US territory of Saipan, Assange pleaded guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified national defence documents but said he had believed the US Constitution’s First Amendment, which protects free speech, shielded his activities.

“Working as a journalist I encouraged my source to provide information that was said to be classified in order to publish that information,” he told the court on Wednesday. “I believed the First Amendment protected that activity but I accept that it was ..



. a violation of the espionage statute.” Chief US District Judge Ramona Manglona accepted his guilty plea, noting the US government indicated there was no personal victim from Assange’s actions.

She wished Assange, who turns 53 next week, an early happy birthday as she released him due to time already served in a British jail. While the US government viewed Assange as reckless for putting its agents at risk of harm.

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