In his first words after being jailed, Julian Assange says, “I chose freedom over justice”

Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblower media group WikiLeaks, told European lawmakers on Tuesday that he had to plead guilty to U.S. spying charges because legal and political efforts to protect his freedom were not enough.

Assange spoke to a committee at the Council of Europe, an international organization best known for its human rights convention. It was his first public appearance since he got out of prison. He said, “I eventually chose freedom over an unrealizable justice.”

It was agreed that Assange, 53, would plead guilty to breaking U.S. spying law in exchange for his freedom. He left Britain in June and went back to his home country of Australia. This ended a 14-year legal journey in Britain.

“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 added.

In 2010, WikiLeaks leaked large amounts of diplomatic cables and hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. military papers about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This was the biggest security breach of its kind in U.S. military history.

Years later, Assange was charged with spying under the Espionage Act.

It was decided by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe that Assange was a political prisoner. They also asked Britain to look into whether he had been treated badly.

Assange sat between his wife Stella and WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson, wearing a black suit with a burgundy tie and a small white beard. He read his first words from paper.

“I am yet not fully equipped to speak about what I have endured,” he said. “Isolation has taken its toll which I am trying to unwind.”

During the next question-and-answer session, Assange spoke freely and looked moved as he told lawmakers that the plea deal meant he would never be able to defend himself against the U.S.’s spying allegations.

“There will never be a hearing into what happened,” he stated.

His wife, whom he married while he was in jail in London, told him last month that he would need time to get better after being locked up for a long time.

Assange’s plans were described as “a first step” when asked about the Strasbourg meeting, which was meant to make people more aware of the need to protect informers and whistleblowers.

After years in jail, he said, getting used to normal life meant learning “tricky things” like how to be a father to two kids who grew up without him and “becoming a husband again, even with a mother-in-law,” which made people laugh.

Assange was first arrested in Britain in 2010 on a European arrest warrant. This was because Swedish officials wanted to question him about sex crime charges that were later dropped. He ran away to the embassy of Ecuador and stayed there for seven years to avoid being sent back to Sweden.

In 2019, he was dragged out of the embassy and taken to London’s Belmarsh high security jail for not showing up for his bail hearing.