AFTER Julian Assange was released by a court on the remote US Pacific territory of Saipan on Wednesday, ending a 14-year legal battle, the WikiLeaks founder's lawyer first thanked Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for making the outcome possible.
Jennifer Robinson, the Australian attorney of Assange, said diplomacy and intense lobbying played a big role in Assange walking free, after spending five years in a high-security British prison and seven years in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.
"At every opportunity, and when Australian officials were making outreach to the US, they knew that they were acting with the full authority of the prime minister of Australia," Robinson told reporters outside the courtroom in Saipan.
"This is what standing up for Australians around the world looks like," Albanese, leader of a centre-left Labour government, told parliament on Wednesday.
Assange had faced a maximum jail sentence of 175 years after being charged with 17 counts of breaching the US Espionage Act and a hacking-related charge.
Under a deal revealed on Tuesday, he pled guilty to a single charge of espionage and walked free.
The deal gained momentum as the US faced growing challenges in the UK over the legality of extraditing Assange.
There was little political will in Canberra to back Assange's case a decade ago. But things changed in 2023 when dozens of lawmakers across the political spectrum swung in behind the campaign to bring him home, his father, John Shipton, told Reuters.
That swing culminated in the passage of a parliamentary motion in February this year calling for Assange's release.
One government official who did not want to be identified said the first big break for Assange came in January 2021, when then shadow Attorney General Mark Dreyfus issued a statement calling for the case against Assange to end after a British court found that it would be unjust to extradite him to the US.
When Labour won power in May 2022, Assange finally had state diplomatic support behind him.
Later that year Albanese called for his release on the floor of the House of Representatives, the first time a Prime Minister had mentioned Assange in parliament since 2012.
"Enough is enough, it is time for this matter to be brought to a conclusion," he said.
"My position is clear and has been made clear to the US administration that it is time that this matter be brought to a close. This is an Australian citizen."
Behind the scenes, Albanese and senior cabinet colleagues including Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Attorney General Dreyfus used visits to the US to lobby their counterparts.
The appointment of Smith and Rudd to the top diplomatic jobs in London and Washington in late 2022 added two more sympathetic lobbyists for Assange's cause.
Smith visited Assange in Belmarsh prison in April 2023, the first such visit by Australia's top UK diplomat since he was imprisoned four years earlier.
Deeper ties between Australia and the US through the Aukus security pact helped push diplomatic efforts along.
President Joe Biden said in April, "We are considering it," when asked by media about Australia's request to end Assange's prosecution.
But it was the UK High Court's decision in May to allow Assange to appeal against his extradition that triggered the breakthrough in negotiations over a plea deal.
The court's decision meant the legal battle over extradition would likely be delayed for months more to make time for appeals.
An early plan to have Assange fly to New York or Washington to enter his plea was changed to Saipan because of Assange's opposition to entering the continental United States, according to an Australian government official.
The deal marks the end of a legal saga following WikiLeaks' mass release of secret US documents in 2010 - one of the largest security breaches in US military history.
As Assange was moved from Belmarsh prison to London's Stansted airport in the dead of night on Monday, the secrecy was such that his children weren't told in case they spilled details about his release, according to his wife Stella.
"I don't think that would have happened if it hadn't been for the incredible support that there has been for Julian, and which has been building over the years, which is global, which is across all sectors, all politics," she said.
* The writers are from Reuters