WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returns to Australia a free man

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned to his homeland Australia aboard a charter jet on Wednesday, hours after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concludes a drawn-out legal saga.

The criminal case of international intrigue, which had played out for years, came to a surprise end in a most unusual setting with Mr. Assange, 52, entering his plea in a U.S. district court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands. The American commonwealth in the Pacific is relatively close to Mr. Assange’s native Australia and accommodated his desire to avoid entering the continental United States.

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Mr. Assange raised his right fist as he emerged for the plane and his supporters at the Canberra airport cheered from a distance. Dressed in the same suit and tie he wore during his earlier court appearance, he embraced his wife Stella Assange and father John Shipton who were waiting on the tarmac.

He was accompanied on the flights by Australian Ambassador to the United States Kevin Rudd and High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Stephen Smith, both of whom played key roles in negotiating his freedom with London and Washington.

The flights were paid for by the “Assange team,” Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said, adding his government played a role in facilitating the transport.

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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Parliament that Mr. Assange’s freedom, after he spent five years in a British prison fighting extradition to the U.S., was the result of his government’s “careful, patient and determined work.”

“Over the two years since we took office, my government has engaged and advocated including at leader-level to resolve this. We have used all appropriate channels," Mr. Albanese said.

Mr. Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson, speaking outside the Saipan court, thanked Mr. Albanese “for his statesmanship, his principled leadership and his diplomacy, which made this outcome possible.”

It is unclear where Mr. Assange will go from Canberra and what his future plans are. His South African lawyer wife and mother of his two children, Stella Assange, has been in Australia for days awaiting her husband's release.

Another of Julian Assange's lawyers, Barry Pollack, expected his client would continue vocal campaigning.

“WikiLeaks’s work will continue and Mr. Assange, I have no doubt, will be a continuing force for freedom of speech and transparency in government,” Mr. Pollack told reporters outside the Saipan court.

Assange's father John Shipton said ahead of his son's arrival that he hoped the iconoclastic internet publisher was coming home to the “great beauty of ordinary life.”

“He will be able to spend quality time with his wife, Stella, and his two children, be able to walk up and down the beach and feel the sand through his toes in winter, that lovely chill,” Mr. Shipton told Australian Broadcasting Corp.