STRASBOURG (Reuters) – Julian Assange, the founder of whistleblower media group WikiLeaks, told European lawmakers on Tuesday his guilty plea to US espionage accusations was necessary because legal and political efforts to protect his freedom were not sufficient.
“I eventually chose freedom over an unrealisable justice,” Assange said, in his first public comments since his release from prison.
Assange, 53, returned to his home country Australia in June after a deal was struck for his release which saw him plead guilty to violating U.S. espionage law, ending a 14-year British legal odyssey.
“I am free today after years of incarceration because I pleaded guilty to journalism, pleaded guilty to seeking information from sources, I pleaded guilty to obtaining information from a source and I pleaded guilty to inform the public”, he added.
Assange was addressing the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights at the Council of Europe, the international organisation best known for its human rights convention.
A report by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe concluded Assange was a political prisoner and called for Britain to hold an inquiry into whether he had been exposed to inhuman treatment.
Dressed in a black suit with a burgundy tie and wearing a slight white beard, Assange sat between his wife Stella, and WikiLeaks’ editor Kristinn Hrafnsson, reading out his initial remarks from sheets of paper.
“I am yet not fully equipped to speak about what I have endured,” he said, adding: “Isolation has taken its toll which I am trying to unwind.”
His wife, whom he married while in a London jail, said last month he would need some time to regain his health and sanity after his long incarceration, as well as to be with their two children who he had never seen outside of a prison.
The most controversial leaks by WikiLeaks featured classified U.S. military documents and videos from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early to mid 2000s that it said highlighted issues such as abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody, human rights violations and civilian deaths.
U.S. authorities said the leaks were reckless, damaged national security, and endangered the lives of agents.
(Reporting by Stephane Mahe in Strasbourg, Tassilo Hummel in Paris; Editing by Christina Fincher)
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