WikiLeaks founder arrives home in Australia after US plea deal

Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, arrived back home in Australia on Wednesday, hours after pleading guilty to a single charge of violating United States espionage law in a deal that ended a 14-year legal battle.

As he stepped out of the plane, the 52-year-old Australian journalist punched the air before being greeted enthusiastically by the waiting supporters.

As he entered the terminal, Assange could be seen hugging his wife, Stella, and his father.

He had been facing 18 criminal charges stemming from the 2010 release by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents.

They contained information about Washington’s war in Iraq and Afghanistan that included details of wrongdoing by US forces.

After leaving the United Kingdom, where he had been in prison, he appeared before a US federal court on the remote Mariana Islands to formalise the deal.

During the three-hour hearing in the US territory of Saipan, the judge sentenced Assange to five years, but released him due to the time he had already served in jail in London.

The journalist has not spoken publicly since being released and did not appear at a Wikileaks press conference in Canberra.

It is unclear where Assange will go now or what his future plans might be, but his wife said on Wednesday he just needed time to recover and get used to freedom.

There has widespread concern about the precedent his guilty plea might set for press freedom worldwide.