Wikileaks founder speaks in public for the first time since release

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has made his first public remarks since his release after he struck a deal with the United States, saying he is free because he pleaded “guilty to journalism”

The 53-year-old on Tuesday traveled to the French city of Strasbourg to appear before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and provide evidence on his detention and conviction, and on their effects on human rights.

“I want to be totally clear: I am not free today because the system worked,” Assange told lawmakers. “I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism.”

He continued, “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. I did not plead guilty to anything else.

“I hope my testimony today can serve to highlight the weakness, the weaknesses of the existing safeguards, and to help those whose cases are less visible, but who are equally vulnerable,” he added.

Assange was released in June after agreeing to plead guilty to a single felony charge in exchange for time served. The deal was finalized in a remote US court in the Pacific before he flew on to his native Australia.

He had been locked up for five years in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison, which he described on Tuesday as a “dungeon,” and sought refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in the British capital for nearly seven years before that, in a bid to avoid potentially spending the rest of his life behind bars.