Australian leaders cautiously welcome expected plea that could bring WikiLeaks founder Assange home

MELBOURNE, Australia — Australian leaders cautiously welcomed an expected plea agreement that could set free Julian Assange, who was pursued for years over WikiLeaks' publication of a trove of classified documents.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday there was nothing to be gained by keeping the Australian incarcerated.

A plane with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange departed Bangkok after refueling Tuesday and he is on the way to Saipan to enter a plea deal with the U.S. government that will free him and resolve the legal case over the publication of a trove of classified documents.

He is expected to plead guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information, the U.S. Justice Department said in a letter filed in court.

Assange is expected to return to Australia if a judge accepts the plea agreement.

Public support for Assange has grown in Australia during the seven years he has spent avoiding extradition to the United States by hiding in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London and later during his five years in Belmarsh Prison.

Albanese has been lobbying since his government was elected in 2022 for the United States to end its prosecution of Assange, and his plight was seen as a test of the prime minister's leverage with President Joe Biden.

Albanese told Parliament that Australian High Commissioner to the U.K. Stephen Smith had flown with Assange from London.

''The government is certainly aware that Australian citizen Mr. Julian Assange has legal proceedings scheduled in the United States. While this is a welcome development, we recognize that these proceedings are crucial and they're delicate,'' Albanese told Parliament.

''Regardless of the views that people have about Mr. Assange's activities, the case has dragged on for too long. There's nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia,'' Albanese added.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong acknowledged the advocacy of a range of lawmakers on Assange's behalf, including delegates of the Bring Julian Assange Parliamentary Group who traveled to Washington last year with a letter signed by 60 Australian lawmakers calling for the prosecution to end.

Wong said Albanese had led the Australian effort, personally raising Assange with Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Wong also revealed that Assange has rejected Australia's offer of consular visits for years until April last year when Smith made the first of his several prison visits.

Australia had argued there was a disconnect between the U.S. treatment of Assange and U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, a WikiLeaks source. Then-U.S. President Barack Obama commuted Manning's 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her release in 2017.

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken pushed back against Albanese's position during a visit to Australia last year, saying Assange was accused of ''very serious criminal conduct'' in publishing a trove of classified U.S. documents more than a decade ago.

Support for Assange crossed political party lines in Australia.

Opposition lawmaker and Assange supporter Barnaby Joyce, a former deputy prime minister, said the plea deal was an encouraging development.

''If you ask me do I think what he did was morally correct? No, it wasn't,'' Joyce said. ''But the issue for me is extraterritoriality.''

Opposition spokesman on foreign affairs Simon Birmingham also welcomed the apparent end to the prosecution.

''We have consistently said that the U.S. and U.K. justice systems should be respected,'' Birmingham said on social media.

A motion that called for the U.S. and Britain to bring the ''matter to a close so that Mr. Assange can return home to his family in Australia'' was supported by 86 lawmakers including Albanese in the 151-seat House of Representatives in February.

Assange's mother, Christine Assange, said the plea deal ''shows the importance and power of quiet diplomacy.''

His father John Shipton used a radio interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp. in Melbourne to thank his son's supporters.

''It looks as though Julian will be free to come back to Australia and my thanks and congratulations to all his supporters in Australia who made it possible and of course Prime Minister Anthony Albanese,'' Shipton said.

Julian Assange's wife and mother of his two children, Stella Assange, was in Sydney awaiting for her husband's return to Australia.

She posted on social media an image of her talking to her husband on FaceTime and with the Sydney Opera House in the background. She said he was speaking from London's Stansted Airport before leaving the U.K.

Julian Assange's lawyer Geoffrey Robertson likened the case to the government-to-government negotiations behind a plea deal in 2007 that enabled Australian al-Qaida supporter David Hicks to be repatriated from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance as a suspected enemy combatant.