“My name is Julian Paul Assange.”
With that, the WikiLeaks founder uttered the first words that the assembled journalists and supporters had heard from him, since the latest – and perhaps final – extraordinary chapter in his legal battle had begun.
In a wood-panelled courthouse, at the foot of a lush hillside on the Saipan coast, Assange waited through three hours of a hearing that would see him plead guilty to violating US espionage law, in a deal that would allow him to be reunited with his family in Australia.
As he entered the court under a blazing blue sky, Assange took no questions from the swarming media – many of whom had flown thousands of miles to this remote American outpost of 40,000 people in the Northern Mariana Islands. One asked whether he preferred the weather in Saipan to London.
The chief judge Ramona V Manglona opened the proceedings. She noted that the court room was unusually packed and asked Assange to confirm what he had done and why he was pleading guilty.
Assange replied that working as a journalist he had encouraged a source to provide classified information and believed the first amendment protected that activity. He was now accepting that it was in fact a violation of the US espionage act.
Asked again if he was pleading guilty because he is “in fact guilty of that charge”, Assange took a long pause.
“I am,” he said.
As the unprecedented hearing continued, the judge noted that the timing of it was key to its outcome.
“If this case was brought before me some time near 2012, without the benefit of what I know now, that you served a period of imprisonment … in apparently one of the harshest facilities in the United Kingdom … I would not be so inclined to accept this plea agreement before me,” she said.
“But it’s the year 2024.”
Manglona declared she would accept the terms of the plea deal hashed out between Assange and the US government. Assange was invited to stand before her and receive his sentence, with his time already served in a British jail meaning that he would be immediately freed, with no period of supervision.
“With this pronouncement it appears you will be able to walk out of this courtroom a free man. I hope there will be some peace restored,” Manglona said.
That this outcome was all but certain the second Assange walked into the courtroom, did little to diminish the impact of the moment. The WikiLeaks founder appeared emotional as he nodded at the judge, acknowledging the verdict.
“It appears this case ends with me here in Saipan,” Manglona went on, asking him whether he understood all the details of the agreement.
Assange replied, now a little hoarse: “I do.”
He tightened his tie and held his glasses in his hand as the judge went through the final formalities.
“With that … Mr Assange it’s apparently an early happy birthday to you,” she said.
“I understand your birthday is next week. I hope you will start your new life in a positive manner.”
The court was adjourned.
As Assange hugged his lawyers, shook the hands of those who had pursued him and signed autographs for supporters, he began to tear up.
In front of the sparkling Pacific, next to a beach where stray kittens ran among the trees, a 14 year legal saga came to a surprising and sudden end, half a world away from where it first began.
