A group of supporters, holding a banner that said "Thank you, Julian" greeted Assange as he stepped out of van smiling and raising his fist in defiance along with his wife, Stella, and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson.
“Assange is free! We are here. The world is with you,” one supporter shouted before Assange entered the Council of Europe building for his first public address since his release from prison in June.
“I am not free today because the system worked,” Assange said. “I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism.”
He added: “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.”
Assange was released in June after five years in a British prison after he pleaded guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concluded a drawn-out legal saga. Prior to his time in prison, he had spent seven years in self-imposed exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he claimed asylum on the grounds of political persecution.
The transition from years in a maximum security prison to addressing the European parliamentarians has been a “profound and a surreal shift,” Assange said as he detailed the experience of isolation in a small cell.
“It strips away one's sense of self, leaving only the raw essence of existence,” he said, his voice cracking while he offered an apology for his “faltering words” and an “unpolished presentation.”
“I’m not yet fully equipped to speak about what I have endured — the relentless struggle to stay alive, both physically and mentally,” Assange said.
The Australian internet publisher was accused of receiving and publishing hundreds of thousands of war logs and diplomatic cables that included details of U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. His activities were celebrated by press freedom advocates, who heralded his role in bringing to light military conduct that might otherwise have been concealed.
Among the files published by WikiLeaks was a video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.
Critics say his conduct put American national security and innocent lives — such as people who provided information to U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan — at risk, and strayed far beyond the bounds of traditional journalism duties.
The yearslong case ended with Assange entering his plea in a U.S. district court on the Northern Mariana Islands, an American commonwealth in the Pacific.
Assange pleaded guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified national defense information. A judge sentenced him to the five years he had already spent behind bars in the U.K. fighting extradition to the United States.
Assange returned to Australia a free man in late June. At the time his wife, Stella, said he needed time to recuperate before speaking publicly.
His appearance on Tuesday comes after the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly published a report on Assange's detention in a high-security U.K. prison for five years.
The assembly's human rights committee said Assange qualified as a political prisoner and issued a draft resolution expressing deep concern at his harsh treatment.
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Surk reported from Nice, France, and Hui reported from London.
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