Julian Assange expected in Strasbourg for his first public speech since his release from prison

This is a first since his release from prison in the United Kingdom in June. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is expected on Tuesday, October 1 in Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin), where he is to address the Council of Europe. The 53-year-old Australian is expected “to testify before the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe”WikiLeaks said on the social network X on Tuesday, September 24. This hearing is organized while this assembly is due to debate, on October 2, an investigation report on “the implications of his detention and its wider effects on human rights, in particular freedom of journalism.”

Since 2010, Julian Assange has published on the WikiLeaks platform more than 700,000 documents concerning Washington’s military and diplomatic activities, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has earned him a reputation as a champion of freedom of information and investigative journalism. Others, on the contrary, see him as a reckless blogger, whose decision to publish highly sensitive documents has put lives in danger and seriously compromised the security of the United States.

Julian Assange’s speech will be his “first official testimony” on his case since his arrest by British police in April 2019, after seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden in a rape investigation that was dismissed the same year. The Australian then spent five years in Belmarsh high-security prison, east of the English capital, fighting extradition to the United States, where he was charged under a 1917 Espionage Act.

A plea deal with the US courts finally allowed him to leave the UK in late June for Saipan, a US territory in the Pacific, where a judge sentenced him to a prison term that covered his pretrial detention. He was then released and returned to Australia. The whistleblower has not spoken publicly since, with his wife saying he needed privacy and time to recover. “Julian Assange is still recovering after his release from prison,” WikiLeaks said in its press release published on Tuesday.