Julian Assange has walked out of US court a free man after pleading guilty to a single espionage charge, and is on his way to Canberra with an expected arrival time of just after 7.30pm on Wednesday (AEST).

The WikiLeaks founder did not address the media throng as he strode out of the court on Saipan Island, in the north-west Pacific, and entered a waiting car to whisk him to the airport.

His lawyer Barry Pollack said Assange was looking forward to “getting back home to Australia” as his 14-year ordeal came to an end.

Inside the courthouse, Assange made a last stand on his case, saying that he believed the Espionage Act, under which he was charged, contradicted the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

“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.

“I believed the First Amendment protected that activity.

“I believe the First Amendment and the espionage act are in contradiction.”

But he said he accepted that encouraging sources to provide classified information for publication could be unlawful.

Assange appeared upbeat and relaxed during the hearing, at times cracking jokes with US District Judge Ramona Manglona.

At one point, when the judge asked him whether he was satisfied with the plea conditions, Assange responded: “It might depend on the outcome,” sparking some laughter in the courtroom.

“So far, so good,” the judge responded.

As a condition of his plea, Assange will be required to destroy information that was provided to WikiLeaks.

Julian Assange waves to cameras in his first moments as a free man. Photo: Getty

The plea deal represents the latest and presumably final chapter in a court fight involving Assange.

The US Justice Department agreed to hold the hearing on the remote island because Assange opposed coming to the continental US and because it’s near Australia.

Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 showed Assange’s chartered plane had departed Saipan just before 1pm (local and Australian time). It is expected to arrive in Canberra shortly after 7.30pm.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was singled out for special thanks by another Assange lawyer, Australian Jennifer Robinson, who spoke after his release.

Robinson praised Albanese’s “statesmanship, his principled leadership and his diplomacy that made the outcome possible”.

“He raised it at the highest level at every opportunity … It was his intention that this be done and we wouldn’t be here today without the Prime Minister of Australia’s support.”

In Parliament on Wednesday, Albanese confirmed Assange would land in Australia later in the day.

“I am pleased that he is on his way home to Australia to reunite with his family here. Over the two years since we took office, my government has engaged and advocated, including at leader level, to resolve this,” he said.

“This work has been complex and it has been considered. This is what is standing up for Australians around the world look like.”

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie, who was part of an Australian parliamentary group lobbying for Assange’s release, also welcomed the end of the years-long saga.

But he warned there remained one “alarming issue” – the precedent set by charging and convicting a journalist for doing his job.

“It is the sort of thing we would expect in an authoritarian or totalitarian country. It is not what we would expect from the United States or a similar country like Australia,” he said.

“I think it sends a chill down the spine of journalists worldwide that this precedent has been set and it means that there is more work to do to push for media freedom and protections for journalists so that they can do their job.

“At the end of the day, Julian Assange is a Walkley Award-winning Australian journalist who did his job.”

Wednesday’s guilty plea resolves a criminal case brought by the Trump administration Justice Department.

It related to WikiLeaks’ receipt and publication of war logs and diplomatic cables that detailed US military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Prosecutors alleged that Assange conspired with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain the records and published them without regard to American national security, including by releasing the names of human sources who provided information to US forces.

Weeks after the release of the largest document cache in 2010, a Swedish prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Assange based on one woman’s allegation of rape and another’s allegation of molestation. Assange has long maintained his innocence, and the investigation was later dropped.

He presented himself in 2012 to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he claimed asylum on the grounds of political persecution, and spent the following seven years in self-exile there, hosting a parade of celebrity visitors and making periodic appearances from the building’s balcony to address supporters.

pic.twitter.com/24W7Jk2E1w

— U.S. Embassy Australia (@USEmbAustralia) June 26, 2024

In 2019, his hosts revoked his asylum, allowing British police to arrest him.

He remained locked up for five years while the US Justice Department sought to extradite him. But the process encountered scepticism from British judges who worried how Assange would be treated by the American criminal justice system.

Assange’s wife, Stella, told the BBC this week that she was “elated” and said the preceding days had been “touch and go” and “non-stop”.

Stella said she had “a whirlwind of emotions” but the priority for her husband was to “get healthy again”, be in touch with nature, and for the family to have “time and privacy”.

Stella Assange and the couple’s two young sons, Gabriel and Max, flew to Australia on Sunday.

-with AAP