STRASBOURG (EFE).— The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assangechose the Council of Europe to break his silence yesterday after leaving prison in June and assured that he now needs a “readaptation” to the freedom that, he said, he achieved by pleading guilty to “having done journalism.”
“I want to be totally clear: I am not free because the system has worked. “I am free, after years of imprisonment, because I pleaded guilty to having done journalism,” said the Australian, who considered himself a “political prisoner” because the United States used the espionage law to accuse him for his leaks.
After publishing thousands of documents in 2010 that revealed Washington’s secrets about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and his detentions in Guantánamo, Assange spent the last twelve years deprived of liberty, first in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London between 2012 and 2019, and since then, in Belmarsh maximum security prison.
On June 25, he was released after an agreement with the United States Department of Justice in which he pleaded guilty to violating the espionage law, which entailed a 62-month prison sentence that was annulled by the time he served in prison. prison.
“My readjustment to the world after a siege in an Embassy and a maximum security prison needs some adjustments, positive but still difficult things, like being a father again to children who have grown up without me, being a husband again. And even dealing with a mother-in-law,” Assange also joked, saying that after his release he has been surprised by the “chilling sound of electric cars.”
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