Assange says ‘pleaded guilty to journalism’ to gain freedom

STRASBOURG, France: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said on Tuesday he was released after years of incarceration only because he pleaded guilty to doing “journalism”, warning that freedom of expression was now at a “dark crossroads”.

“I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because I pleaded guilty to journalism,” Assange told the Council of Europe rights body at its Strasbourg headquarters in his first public comments since his release.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) had issued a report expressing alarm at Assange´s treatment, saying it had a “chilling effect on human rights”.

He spent most of the last 14 years either holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London to avoid arrest, or locked up at Belmarsh Prison.

Assange was released under a plea bargain in June, after serving a sentence for publishing hundreds of thousands of confidential US government documents.

The trove included searingly frank US State Department descriptions of foreign leaders, accounts of extrajudicial killings and intelligence gathering against allies.

Assange returned to Australia and since then had not publicly commented on his legal woes or his years behind bars.

“I eventually chose freedom over unrealisable justice... justice for me is now precluded,” Assange said, noting he had been facing a 175-year jail sentence.