PA Media/dpa
London
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has spoken in public for the first time since being released from prison after he struck a deal with the United States.
He travelled from Australia to Strasbourg to address a human rights committee (Pace) of the Council of Europe, which has said in a report that he was a political prisoner.
He described his cell in London’s Belmarsh Prison, where he was held for several years as he fought extradition to the US, as a “dungeon”.
He apologized for his “faltering” address, saying he is still trying to adjust after years of isolation had “taken its toll”.
Legal action against Assange started in 2010 after hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were published.
Assange, accompanied by his wife Stella and WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnssson, said: “Justice for me is now precluded as the US government insisted in writing into its plea agreement that I cannot file a case at the European Court of Human Rights or even a Freedom of Information Act request over what it did to me as a result of its extradition request.
“I want to be totally clear: I am not free today because the system worked.
“I am free today (after) years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism.
“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.”
