Julian Assange, founder of the media site WikiLeaks, told European lawmakers on Tuesday that his guilty plea to US espionage charges was necessary because legal and political efforts to protect his freedom were not enough.
“I have ultimately chosen freedom over unachievable justice,” Assange said, in his first public comments since his release from prison, addressing a committee at the Council of Europe, the international body known as a human rights treaty.
Assange, 53, returned to his native Australia in June after reaching an agreement for his release under which he pleaded guilty to violating the US Espionage Act, ending a 14-year British legal saga.
He said: “I am free today after years in prison because I pleaded guilty to practicing journalism, I pleaded guilty to seeking information from a source, I pleaded guilty to obtaining information from a source, and I pleaded guilty to informing the public of this information.” .
In 2010, WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of secret US military documents about Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history – as well as collections of diplomatic cables.
Assange was charged years later under the Espionage Act.
A report by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe concluded that Assange was a political prisoner and called on Britain to investigate whether he had been subjected to inhumane treatment.
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Assange, wearing a black suit, burgundy tie and stubble, sat between his wife Stella and WikiLeaks editor Kristen Hrafnsson, reading his initial notes from papers.
He said: “I am not yet ready to talk about what I suffered from,” adding: “Isolation has had an effect that I am trying to get rid of.”
Speaking freely during the subsequent question-and-answer session, Assange appeared emotional when he told lawmakers that the plea deal meant he would be barred from bringing a case to defend himself against US espionage charges.
He added: “There will be no hearing for what happened.”
His wife, whom he married while he was in a London prison, said last month that he would need time to regain his health and sanity after being imprisoned for a long time.
Asked about his plans, Assange said the Strasbourg session, which aims to raise awareness of the need to protect whistleblowers and whistleblowers, was a “first step.”
He said adjusting to normal life after years in prison included some “difficult things,” such as learning how to become a father to two children who grew up without him and “becoming a husband again, including with a mother-in-law,” by drawing. Some laughter from the crowd.
Assange was first arrested in Britain in 2010 on a European arrest warrant after Swedish authorities said they wanted to question him about allegations of sex crimes that were later dropped. He fled to the Ecuadorian embassy where he remained for seven years to avoid extradition to Sweden.
He was removed from the embassy in 2019 and transferred to Belmarsh maximum security prison in London for skipping bail.
—(Reporting by Stephane Mahe and Tilman Blashofer in Strasbourg and Tassilo Hummel in Paris – Prepared by Muhammad for the Arabic Bulletin – Prepared by Muhammad for the Arabic Bulletin) Editing by Christina Fincher
