Julian Assange, the founder of whistleblower media group WikiLeaks, told European lawmakers on Tuesday, October 1, his guilty plea to US espionage accusations was necessary because legal and political efforts to protect his freedom were not sufficient, Reuters reports.
“I eventually chose freedom over an unrealizable justice,” Assange said, in his first public comments since his release from prison, addressing a committee at the Council of Europe.
Assange, 53, 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 legal odyssey.
WikiLeaks in 2010 released hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. military documents on Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – the largest security breaches of their kind in U.S. military history – along with swaths of diplomatic cables. Assange was indicted years later under the Espionage Act.
Mr Assange was given a standing ovation by committee members at the end of the 90-minute session.
