LONDON —A British court sentenced WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to 50 weeks in prison on Wednesday, seven years after he breached bail conditions by fleeing to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid arrest.

“The seriousness of your offense, having taken into account the mitigation, merits a sentence near the maximum,” Judge Deborah Taylor told Assange at London’s Southwark Crown Court on Wednesday.

Taylor said she had taken into account medical evidence on “the mental and physical effects of being in the embassy for a prolonged period” and a letter of apology in which Assange expressed regret for his actions.

Last month, the 47-year-old Australian was dragged out of the embassy and found guilty of failing to surrender to British authorities over a 2010 warrant linked to sexual assault charges in Sweden.

Assange fled to the embassy in 2012 after he lost a legal battle against his extradition to Sweden. The charges were later dropped, but Assange remained in the building for seven years amid fears he would be handed over to U.S. authorities for WikiLeaks’ publication of top-secret U.S. diplomatic cables.

Ecuador terminated Assange’s asylum because he repeatedly violated international conventions and WikiLeaks had threatened Quito, President Lenin Moreno said.

Taylor suggested that Assange would be eligible for release after serving half his sentence if he is not found guilty of any further offenses, meaning he could be released around the beginning of October.

Assange, who had pleaded not guilty to skipping bail, read his letter of apology to the court. He apologized to people who felt that he had “disrespected” them, the BBC and other British media reported.

“I did what I thought at the time was the best or perhaps the only thing that I could have done,” he said.

The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, a panel of independent legal scholars, ruled in 2016 that Assange had been subject to arbitrary detention since his arrest in London in 2010 in connection with allegations of rape and sexual assault in Sweden.

Taylor said the U.N. panel’s finding was “not binding on this court and … (apparently) was underpinned by misconceptions of fact and law.”

WikiLeaks said Assange’s sentence was “as shocking as it is vindictive.”

“We have grave concerns as to whether he will receive a fair extradition hearing in the UK,” WikiLeaks tweeted.