WikiLeaks founder Assange freed in US plea deal

Julian Assange was on his way home to Australia as a free man Wednesday after a plea deal ended years of legal drama for the WikiLeaks founder, who had long been wanted for revealing U.S. state secrets.

Assange, who from 2010 published hundreds of thousands of confidential U.S. documents on the whistleblowing website, was released this week from a high-security British prison.

The 52-year-old traveled to the Northern Mariana Islands, a Pacific U.S. territory, to plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defense information.

He was sentenced Wednesday to five years and two months in prison — but credited for the same amount of time he spent behind bars in Britain while fighting extradition to the United States.

"You will be able to walk out of this courtroom a free man," the judge told Assange, adding she hoped the deal would restore some "peace" to him after his incarceration.

Assange has become a hero to free speech campaigners and a villain to those who thought he had endangered U.S. security and intelligence sources.

"Working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide material that was said to be classified," Assange, dressed in a black suit with a brown tie and his hair slicked back, told the court.

But he did not address the media as he left the building, and his plane took off shortly after for Canberra, where he will be reunited with his family.

His lawyer Jen Robinson told reporters it was a "historic day" that "brings to an end 14 years of legal battles".

"It also brings to an end a case which has been recognised as the greatest threat to the First Amendment in the 21st century," she said.

  Case 'dragged on' 

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