Assange denounces before the Council of Europe that he is only “guilty of doing journalism”

Oct. 1 () –

The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, broke his silence this Tuesday after being released from a British prison in June with a speech before the Council of Europe in which he once again defended the leak of thousands of secret United States documents, pointing out that he is only “guilty of doing journalism.”

Assange has traveled from his native Australia to Strasbourg, for a symbolic speech in which he recalled his years in the “dungeon” of a maximum security prison in London, where he was held for five years, added to the other seven he spent as a refugee in the Embassy of Ecuador in the British capital.

He has stated that all these years of isolation “have taken their toll” on him, although he is now trying to put his life back together thanks to an agreement reached with the United States Attorney’s Office, under which he pleaded guilty to violating the Espionage Act in exchange for that the North American authorities would consider that the time he had to remain behind bars had expired.

Before the Human Rights Commission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and accompanied by his wife, Stella Assange, and the director of Wikileaks, Kristinn Hrafnssson, he defended that if he is now free it is “because the system has worked.” “I pleaded guilty to doing journalism. I pleaded guilty to seeking information from sources,” of “nothing more,” he noted in his speech.

He hopes that his testimony will now at least serve to “expose the weakness of the current safeguards” for press freedom, to bring to light other cases that may be “less visible” but affect “equally vulnerable” people. In his case, he considers that the United States undertook “legal retaliation” for “publishing the truth” about abuses perpetrated in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In this sense, he has warned of the “dark crossroads” that freedom of expression faces throughout the world, with investigative journalism “threatened” by laws that, as he has stated, criminalize activities aimed at gathering information. “The idea is simple: journalists should not be persecuted for doing their job,” he concluded.