The cost of free speech

Julian Assange’s ordeal is a reality check of the price one must pay for speaking truth to power.

After a 14-year-long ordeal, involving a seven-year asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and a five-year incarceration in the high-security Belmarsh Prison, Julian Assange, who earned global fame for releasing classified American documents, is finally a free man. Assange, now 51, stepped into freedom outside of an American court in the US Pacific island territory of Saipan on Wednesday after pleading guilty to a criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified defence documents. As he was sentenced to time he had already served in prison, he was allowed to head home to Australia.