Julian Assange returns to Australia after US legal battle ends

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned to his homeland Australia to a rousing welcome after a plea deal concluded his 14-year legal saga.

Assange entered his plea in Saipan, a US territory near Australia, pleading guilty to violating US espionage law and concluding his case.

Julian Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006, an internet-based "dead letter drop" for leakers of classified or sensitive information.

WikiLeaks' exposes in 2010 included a video of a US air strike that killed civilians in Baghdad, and thousands of secret documents on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

The same year, he faced sex crime allegations in Sweden and an arrest in Britain. By 2011, a Britain court ordered Assange's extradition to Sweden.

After his final appeal was rejected by the British Supreme Court, Assange took refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London and was later granted political asylum. 

Ecuador revoked Assange's political asylum in 2019, leading to his arrest. He was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison, but remained in jail pending extradition hearings.

A London court began the first part of extradition hearings in 2020, with a judge ruling a year later against his extradition owing to mental health problems.

In 2022, Assange married Stella Moris, the mother of his two children fathered inside the Ecuadorean embassy, inside a British high-security prison.

By February 2024, Assange made his final attempt to prevent extradition, which is put on hold amid demand from the US that he will not face death penalty.

As Assange landed in Australia, after five years in one of Britain's harshest prisons and seven years in the Ecuadorean embassy, his lawyer said WikiLeaks' work will continue.