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Transcript
00:00Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is back in his home country of Australia today.
00:04He is a free man.
00:06Assange landed within the past hour or two hours in Canberra.
00:10Now earlier this Wednesday morning, he was in a U.S. federal court off of the mainland
00:15in the northern Mariana Islands to plead guilty to just one single count of obtaining and
00:20publishing U.S. military secrets.
00:22For the past 14 years, Assange has been serving jail time in London, and before that he was
00:27in self-imposed exile in the Ecuadorian embassy.
00:31The U.S. judge said his time already served means he will not have to spend any more time
00:36behind bars.
00:37Here's more reaction now from his Australian lawyer and then his wife Stella speaking at
00:42a press conference earlier today.
00:45We are absolutely delighted after a very long and complex negotiation with the U.S. government
00:52that we've reached this plea deal that enabled him to come home to Australia as a free man.
01:00The agreement is that he will spend no more time in prison.
01:04The terms of the plea deal are, unfortunately, that he, in order to achieve his freedom and
01:12to leave the high security prison in Belmarsh, he had to choose to plead guilty.
01:18Julian wanted me to sincerely thank everyone.
01:23He wanted to be here.
01:25But you have to understand what he's been through.
01:30He needs time.
01:33He needs to recuperate.
01:36And this is a process.
01:39I ask you, please, to give us space, to give us privacy, to find our place, to let our
01:51family be a family before he can speak again at a time of his choosing.

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