WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said he was released after years of incarceration only because he pleaded guilty to doing “journalism”, warning freedom of expression was now at a “dark crossroads”.“I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because I pleaded guilty to journalism,” Assange told the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Tuesday.
“I pled guilty to seeking information from a source. I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source. And I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was.”
He was addressing the Council of Europe rights body at its Strasbourg headquarters in his first public comments since his release. The Parliamentary Assembly includes lawmakers from 46 European countries.
PACE had issued a report expressing alarm at Assange’s treatment, saying it had a “chilling effect on human rights”.
Assange spent most of the last 14 years either holed up in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London to avoid arrest, or locked up at Belmarsh Prison.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gestures as he arrives in Canberra, Australia, in June [File: Edgar Su/Reuters]
He was released under a plea bargain in June, after serving a sentence for publishing hundreds of thousands of confidential United States government documents.
The trove included searingly frank US State Department descriptions of foreign leaders, accoun …
