Wikileaks founder appears in public for the first time since his release

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange appears in public for the first time since his release from a high-security British prison. He will speak on his case at a hearing of the Legal and Human Rights Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

According to the initiators, the hearing will “examine his detention and sentencing and their chilling effect on human rights,” before a plenary debate by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on the issue on Wednesday. Since the exclusion of Russia, 46 countries have belonged to the Council of Europe. The organization is not affiliated with the EU.

The committee argues that Assange should be classified as a political prisoner due to the “disproportionately serious charges brought against him by the US authorities and the high penalties imposed by the Espionage Act for journalistic activities”.

How did Assange’s release come about?

Assange was accused in the US of publishing around 700,000 confidential documents about US military and diplomatic activities starting in 2010. The papers contained explosive information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the killing of civilians and the mistreatment of prisoners by American military personnel.

The Wikileaks founder returned to his home country of Australia at the end of June after a total of twelve years in embassy asylum and prison in Great Britain. The Australian had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to pass on national defense information as part of an agreement with the United States judiciary. He was therefore formally sentenced to five years and two months in prison. This sentence had already been served due to his five years in prison in the British Belmarsh Prison. Before his imprisonment, Assange had found asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years.