‘I want to be totally clear: I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because I plead guilty to journalism’
— Julian Assange

In his first public appearance after leaving Belmarsh prison, on October 1st, 2024 Julian Assange gave a testimony to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg.

Julian Assange, accompanied by his wife Stella, took part in a parliamentary hearing on his detention and conviction - and their chilling effect on human rights – ahead of a full plenary debate on this topic by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) due on Wednesday 2 October.

The hearing was organised by the Assembly’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights in the framework of a report on this topic by Thorhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir (Iceland, SOC). Wikileaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson also took part.

Full text of the testimony (English language)

Here are just a few paragraphs from the testimony:

“In January 2017, Obama also commuted the sentence of Manning, who had been convicted of being one of my sources. However, in February 2017, the landscape changed dramatically. President Trump had been elected. He appointed two wolves in MAGA hats: Mike Pompeo, a Kansas congressman and former arms industry executive, as CIA Director, and William Barr, a former CIA officer, as US Attorney General.

By March 2017, WikiLeaks had exposed the CIA’s infiltration of French political parties, its spying on French and German leaders, its spying on the European Central Bank, European economics ministries, and its standing orders to spy on French industry as a whole. We revealed the CIA's vast production of malware and viruses, its subversion of supply chains, its subversion of antivirus software, cars, smart TVs and iPhones.

CIA Director Pompeo launched a campaign of retribution. It is now a matter of public record that under Pompeo's explicit direction, the CIA drew up plans to kidnap and to assassinate me within the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and authorized going after my European colleagues, subjecting us to theft, hacking attacks, and the planting of false information.

My wife and my infant son were also targeted. A CIA asset was permanently assigned to track my wife and instructions were given to obtain DNA from my six month old son's nappy.”

The next day, October 2nd, Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly votes after hearing WikiLeaks co-founder testify, brought a resolution that Julian Assange was a ‘political prisoner’ — The vote was 88 in favor, 13 against, and 20 abstentions.