JENNIFER ROBINSON, JULIAN ASSANGE'S LAWYER: Thanks, Sarah.JENNIFER ROBINSON: He was just thrilled. It was a bit surreal for all of us, I think. It's been 14 long years of legal battles.
It was incredibly moving and to be there to celebrate, to have Kevin Rudd our ambassador to the US, Stephen Smith the UK High Commissioner to London on the plane there with us, it was really special. JENNIFER ROBINSON: Well, as you said, we have been in complex, difficult negotiations with the Department of Justice for many months to reach the plea deal that we reached.
Obviously, as you can imagine, a huge amount of diplomatic resources went into making this happen. A lot of our time back and forth to the DOJ to get there and thankfully we got there.
But, of course, there were other broader legal factors that played into that. So we won leave to appeal in the United Kingdom earlier this year. The British High Court was concerned that Julian would not be granted First Amendment protections if he was extradited because he's an Australian citizen, because he's a foreign citizen.
JENNIFER ROBINSON: That was the only way that we were going to get him out of prison. That was the baseline. SARAH FERGUSON: Now, just in relation to that guilty plea, did Julian Assange have to be persuaded by you or by his team, or by Kevin Rudd, to accept that he was going to have to plead guilty to something?
If he lost and if we lost the extradition case, he would have been extradited to the United States to prison conditions that the medical evidence showed would cause his suicide. To a country where the CIA plotted to kidnap and kill him. That was a conversation that we were always open to. Of course, our primary position was this case should never have been brought.
Now, in the amended plea agreement, it says that the United States has not identified any victim qualifying for individual restitution. So how significant was it that they were not producing victims of what they allege was a crime? Not only that, there was no allegation or reference to hacking anywhere in this plea deal, because there was no hacking and the Government could not make that case.
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