WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has returned to his homeland Australia aboard a charter jet hours after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets.

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 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 Assange’s native Australia and accommodated his desire to avoid entering the continental United States.

Assange was accused of receiving and publishing hundreds of thousands of war logs and diplomatic cables that included details of U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. His activities drew an outpouring of support from press freedom advocates, who heralded his role in bringing to light military conduct that might otherwise have been concealed from view and warned of a chilling effect on journalists. Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.

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.

    • NOT_RICK@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      6 months ago

      I never said it was. Aiding someone in exfiltrating classified documents on the other hand decidedly is. Not something journalists make a habit of doing, either.

      • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOP
        5·
        6 months ago

        Journalists do it all the time. That’s where they used unnamed sources and have gone to jail to protect those sources. Or maybe you’re too young to remember Deep Throat.

        • NOT_RICK@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          6 months ago

          I know who deep throat is. There’s a big difference between refusing to cooperate with an investigation and name names of confidential sources that have provided information versus actively aiding a person in absconding with information. The courts agree with me too, considering John Lawrence was released after a day by an appellate court. Also notable that his charge was merely contempt whereas Assange’s was espionage.

          • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOP
            3·
            6 months ago

            Please explain how Assange ‘actively aided’ his source in getting the info.

            I’ll wait.

            • NOT_RICK@lemmy.worldEnglish
              8·
              6 months ago

              You can read about “Nathaniel” here and how the relationship between Manning and WL started. Manning herself implies the relationship was manipulative.

              Over the next few months, I stayed in frequent contact with Nathaniel. We conversed on nearly a daily basis, and I felt we were developing a friendship. The conversations covered many topics, and I enjoyed the ability to talk about pretty much anything, and not just the publications that the WLO was working on.

              In retrospect, I realize these dynamics were artificial, and were valued more by myself than Nathaniel. For me, these conversations represented an opportunity to escape from the immense pressures and anxiety that I experienced and built up throughout the deployment. It seemed that as I tried harder to “fit in” at work, the more I seemed to alienate my peers, and lose respect, trust and the support I needed.

              In their chat logs Nathaniel assisted Manning in attempting to crack a password hash to attempt to cover up the source of the leaks. Thats where the journalistic line was crossed in my eyes.

                • NOT_RICK@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  4·
                  6 months ago

                  No problem, there’s so much noise out there regarding this topic; it’s really hard to get a handle on what is real and what is someone just blowing smoke.

      • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        4·
        6 months ago

        Aiding someone in exfiltrating classified documents on the other hand decidedly is.

        but shouldn’t be if the goal is to expose wrongdoing in a journalistic publication.

        • NOT_RICK@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          6 months ago

          I’d say because most follow an ethics code, as much as I feel there was a public interest in those documents coming out, but with proper sanitation to protect lives.

            • NOT_RICK@lemmy.worldEnglish
              10·
              6 months ago

              I was talking about protecting the Afghani informants from the Taliban.

              We knew about the spies and people who collaborate with U.S. forces. We will investigate through our own secret service whether the people mentioned are really spies working for the U.S. If they are U.S. spies, then we know how to punish them.

              — Zabihullah Mujahid

              I reviewed the statement of someone that a London paper claimed to be speaking for some part of the Taliban. Remember, the Taliban is actually not a homogenous group. And the statement, as far as such things go, was fairly reasonable, which is that they would not trust these documents; they would use their own intelligence organization’s investigations to understand whether those people were defectors or collaborators, and if so, after their investigations, then they would receive appropriate punishment. Now, of course, that is — you know, that image is disturbing, but that is what happens in war, that spies or traitors are investigated.

              — Julian Assange

              Assange is so casual about the potential human cost of his actions. The guy is a prick.