Assange to give first public address since prison release

SYDNEY: Controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange plans to break his post-prison silence in an address to the Council of Europe next week, his organisation said Wednesday.

WikiLeaks said the 53-year-old would travel from his native Australia to Strasbourg on October 1 to testify before a parliamentary legal committee investigating his case.

Assange was released from a British prison in June, after serving time for publishing hundreds of thousands of confidential US government documents from 2010.

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

Assange spent most of the last 14 years holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London while trying to avoid arrest or locked up at Belmarsh Prison.

Supporters hail him as a champion of free speech and investigative journalism who was persecuted by authorities and unfairly imprisoned.

Detractors see him as a reckless blogger whose decision to publish ultra-sensitive documents uncensored put lives at risk and fundamentally jeopardised US security.

He was released on 25 June and returned to Australia after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate national defence information.

Since then Assange has not publicly commented on his legal woes or his years behind bars.

He has been seen infrequently, appearing at a court in the Marianas Islands, reuniting with his wife on arrival at a Canberra airport and spending time with his family on a quiet beach in Australia.

WikiLeaks and his wife Stella Assange have occasionally offered updates about his well-being.

“Julian Assange is still in recovery following his release from prison,“ the organisation said on Wednesday.

The group said Assage would attend the Council of Europe “session in person due to the exceptional nature of the invitation.”

WikiLeaks said that “on October 1, Julian Assange will arrive in Strasbourg to give evidence before the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights”.

The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly is scheduled to debate a report about his case on October 2.

The Council of Europe is an international organisation that brings together the 46 signatory states of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Assange supporters have long called for him to receive a full US presidential pardon.

His case remains deeply contentious, effectively opening the door to the possibility that journalists could in future be prosecuted under the US Espionage Act.

Chelsea Manning, the army intelligence analyst who leaked the documents to Assange, had her 35-year sentence commuted by then-president Barack Obama in 2017.

President Joe Biden, who is likely to issue a slew of pardons before leaving office next January, has previously described Assange as a “terrorist”.