I chose freedom over justice - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on his guilty plea

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange made a public statement for the first time since his release. He stressed that his guilty plea to U.S. espionage accusations was necessary because legal and political efforts to protect his freedom were insufficient, Reuters reported.

"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, 53, returned to his home country of Australia in June after a plea deal was reached in which he pleaded guilty to violating the U.S. Espionage Act, ending a 14-year trial.

"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.

As you know, in 2010 WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. military documents about Washington's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is considered the largest leak of classified data in U.S. history. Assange faced a number of charges under the Espionage Act.

Assange was first arrested in the UK in 2010 on a European arrest warrant after Swedish authorities said they wanted to question him on sex-offense charges that were later dropped. He fled to the Ecuadorian embassy, ​​where he stayed for seven years to avoid extradition to Sweden. In 2019, he was transferred to Belmarsh maximum security prison in London.

Later, the report of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe concluded that Assange was a political prisoner.

As previously reported, russian spies gained access to the conversation of German high-ranking officials regarding Ukraine and the supply of Taurus weapons systems simply by joining a conference in WebEx (similar to Zoom).