Mission improbable: My race to Saipan for a date with history

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Håfa Adai!

Or “hello” in the local Chamorro language of the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands.

I know this because I’m on the small island of Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, a remote archipelago and US outpost in the far western reaches of the Pacific Ocean.

A place, if I’m honest, I’d never heard of until 48 hours ago.

I’m not usually one to seize the early worm on a day off. And so it was that I was still dozing at 9am on Tuesday at my home in Singapore when I woke to my phone buzzing from a just-missed call from my editor.

Julian Assange was out of London’s Belmarsh Prison and en route to a little-known island in the Pacific for a plea deal court hearing in 24 hours. My editor was still checking flight options, but could I get to the airport within an hour?

Julian Assange arrives at the US District Court in Saipan for his historic plea deal hearing.Credit: Getty Images

I’ve been a journalist for a decade now and the exhilarating thrill of a newsroom springing into full flight never gets old.

Even the most cynical of journalists knows there are few workplaces that have the agility to respond at breakneck speed to history-making events – the linchpin being capable, trustworthy editors able to make important calls without being stymied by layers of bureaucracy. I’m lucky to have such editors.

For those watching the sausage being made, however, the spectacle is far less glamorous than it may appear from the outside.

“What’s the weather like in this place?” I yelled across the room to my long-suffering partner, Mathew, as I frantically lobbed shoes, a change of clothes, and a toothbrush into my grab-bag suitcase.

As a small business owner, Mathew hadn’t been able to make the move with me when I relocated from Australia a couple of months ago, but his dedication to supporting my dream of being a foreign correspondent had brought him to Singapore for a few days’ R&R. When I’d taken the job of North Asia correspondent, we had committed to seeing each other in person at least every two months, and this was our first rendezvous since I’d started – cut short, but thankfully only by a day.

“This is going to be amazing,” he said, always finding the silver lining, as I flew out the door. I later called him from the airport realising in my haste I’d forgotten to say goodbye properly.

Three flights, connecting through Manila and then Guam, and almost 24 hours of transit later, I touched down in Saipan at 8.50am. Assange’s hearing was due to start in 10 minutes.

My editor, Nick, had fielded a late-night call from me at Manila airport as I stressed about the ridiculously small window we had to pull this off. It had taken almost two hours to navigate all of the airport processes in Manila.

What if my flight is delayed and I miss the whole thing? What if Assange walks free from the court to a phalanx of international media cameras and I’m stuck in an airport queue?

In a small miracle, I cleared US customs at Saipan in minutes and was in a taxi by 8.59am. My driver, Minto, briefed on my situation, floored the pedal and got me to the court by 9.11am. He had graciously agreed to take me even though I had no US dollars on hand to pay him, and he didn’t have eftpos facilities.

Amusingly, a local TV station’s live feed captured me running into the court with my suitcase, much to the mirth of my editors back home.

For the next three hours, I live-blogged the court proceedings, firstly from a media room and then from inside the courtroom, sitting a couple of rows behind Assange.

The gamble, and scramble, had paid off.

Whatever you may think of the WikiLeaks founder – political martyr, flawed antihero who exposed war crimes, traitor who put lives at risk, or perhaps a definition-defying combination of all of the above – it is a profound thing to witness a person being granted their freedom.

I was little more than two metres away when Assange turned to face the courtroom crowd, having been declared a free man by Judge Ramona Manglona. Guilty of one count of espionage, but his sentence deemed already served by his five-year stint in Belmarsh prison in London.

I can’t pretend to know what Assange was thinking, and he is yet to hold a press conference. But in that instant, his face carried the gravity of a man at the end of a 14-year ordeal. Neither smiling nor jubilant, but quietly overcome, perhaps just processing the significance of a moment that had seemed illusive for so long.

On a sidenote, this ringside seat to history also marked a small, full-circle moment in my career. Twelve years ago, as an ANU law student desperate to find a foothold in journalism, I interviewed Jennifer Robinson, a former ANU alumna, for the student newspaper Woroni’s then-fledging radio program. Maybe 10 people listened to that interview.

It was 2012, and a few months earlier, Assange had fled into the Ecuadorian embassy in London seeking asylum, and Robinson, already a renowned barrister in her early 30s, was emerging as a leading spokesperson for his legal case.

Robinson was there again on Wednesday, all these years later outside the Saipan court, championing his cause in a press conference where I was among the few members of the Australian press to have made it to the island.

Now I’m off to enjoy a few hours of tropical sun before boarding a flight home.

And to find Minto. I owe him $US25.

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