I chose freedom over justice: Assange at first public appearance

The founder of the whistleblower media group, WikiLeaks, Julian Assange has today told European lawmakers that 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, addressing a committee at the Council of Europe, the international body best known for its human rights convention.

Assange returned to his home country Australia, in June after a deal was struck for his release which saw him plead guilty to violating US espionage law, ending a 14-year British odyssey.

“I am free today after years of incarceration because I pleaded guilty to journalism, 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 what that information was,” he said.

WikiLeaks in 2010 released hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents on Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history – along with swaths of diplomatic cables.

Assange was indicted years later under the Espionage Act.
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.

 Julian Assange reaches plea deal with US, set to return to his native Australia

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