At Council of Europe, Julian Assange Defends the Importance of Journalism, Warns of US Overreach and Acknowledges He “Chose Freedom Over Unrealizable Justice”
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In moving testimony at a hearing of the Legal Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg this morning, WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange — in his first public appearance since his freedom was restored three months ago — spoke eloquently about the continuing importance of journalistic freedom to hold the powerful to account, while conceding that, in his case, he eventually “chose freedom over unrealizable justice” by signing a plea deal in which he was required to admit that he was “guilty” of journalism.
Still visibly shaken by his five-year ordeal in Britain’s maximum security Belmarsh prison, as he sought to challenge a US extradition request for a politically motivated prosecution under the US Espionage Act that carried a maximum 175-year sentence, Assange began by reflecting on his inability, to date, to be able to fully articulate what he described as his “relentless struggle to stay alive, both physically and mentally”, while in Belmarsh, as well as his present inability to speak about “the deaths by hanging, murder and medical neglect” of his fellow prisoners.
He then thanked PACE for their interventions on his behalf, as well as the many organizations and individuals who worked for his freedom, which, he said, should not have been necessary, but was because the legal protections that he should have been able to count on were, sadly, inadequate, in the face of a government — the US government, with the support of the UK in particular — that treated them with contempt, obliging him to sign a plea deal in which he “pled guilty to journalism, to ”seeking information from a source”, to “obtaining information from a source”, and to “informing the public what that information was”, because otherwise he would never have been freed.
The Four Fathers Release ‘Warriors (Freedom Version)’, Marking Julian Assange’s 50 Days as a Free Man
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Thursday August 15 marked 50 days since Julian Assange landed in Australia as a free man, after five years in HMP Belmarsh, a maximum-security prison in south east London, fighting his proposed extradition to the US for publishing — with some of the world’s most prestigious newspapers — classified US files leaked by Chelsea Manning. Prior to his time in Belmarsh, he had spent nearly seven years confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in Knightsbridge, where he had successfully sought asylum in June 2012, until his asylum was abruptly withdrawn in May 2019.
To mark the occasion, The Four Fathers have released ‘Warriors (Freedom Version)’, an amended version of our song ‘Warriors’, about Julian and Chelsea, which we first released in February, with the last two lines changed to celebrate Julian’s 50 days of freedom.
In the original, I sang that the price of Julian’s actions was “Extradition and life imprisonment and the end of the freedom of the press”, while the new version changes that to “Five years fighting extradition in Belmarsh until a plea deal set him free” — the plea deal that he signed in the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, a US Commonwealth in the Pacific, prior to his arrival back in Australia on June 26, where he was reunited with his wife and his sons.
Podcast: I Discuss the UK’s General Election, Warmongering, Protest and Julian Assange’s Release with Andy Bungay
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I’m pleased to have just posted on my YouTube channel the full audio recording of an interview I undertook on July 13, nine days after the UK’s recent General Election, with Andy Bungay of Riverside Radio, a community radio station in Wandsworth, in south London. Some of what we discussed drew on the article I wrote just after the election, Despite the Landslide, Labour Have No Vision and Only Won the UK General Election Because the Tories Lost So Spectacularly.
Parts of the interview were broadcast live that evening, with the full interview subsequently included in a longer version of the show posted on Andy’s MixCloud page, as the latest instalment of a monthly show, the Colin Crilly Takeover, incorporated into Andy’s weekly show, The Chiminea.
It was a great pleasure to chat to Andy about the relief that so many people were feeling about being rid of the cruel, corrupt and incompetent Tory government, and I was pleased to have the opportunity to explain how so much of this derangement was because of Brexit, when, after Theresa May lost her struggle to try and make it work in a rational manner, we were burdened with a succession of dreadful Prime Ministers — Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak — who fundamentally gave up on governing, and focused instead on deranged fantasies: treating the UK as a tabula rasa, a lawless blank slate which they intended to remake as little more than a corrupt kleptocracy and an authoritarian nightmare, a place where refugees would all be treated as criminals, and flown on a one-way trip to Rwanda, and any kind of protest was akin to terrorism.
Via a Fundamentally Devious US Plea Deal, Julian Assange Will Soon Be a Free Man
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In unexpected and truly heartening news, WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange will soon now a free man, reunited, in his home country of Australia, with his wife Stella and their two sons, Gabriel and Max (born in 2017 and 2019), who have only ever seen their father behind bars.
Assange was released from the maximum-security HMP Belmarsh in south east London, where he had spent over five years —1,901 days — in legal limbo, fighting extradition to the US to face espionage charges relating to his work as a journalist and publisher exposing US crimes and war crimes.
From Stansted Airport, he is being flown to the Northern Mariana Islands, a commonwealth of the United States, where, in exchange for his freedom, he has agreed to sign a plea deal admitting that he had “knowingly and unlawfully conspired with Chelsea Manning” to commit espionage against the United States by obtaining and disseminating classified national defence information.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
