Australia news live: Julian Assange says he is free because he ‘pled guilty to journalism’ in first public statement since release

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Finally, before receiving a standing ovation, Assange says his final words, urging journalists to “continue the fight”:

In 2010 I was living in Paris.

I went to the United Kingdom and never came back. Until now, it’s good to be back.

It’s good to be amongst people who, as we say, it’s good to be amongst friends.

I would just like to thank all the people who have fought for my liberation and who have understood, importantly, that my liberation was coupled to their own liberation, and that when one of us falls through the cracks, soon enough, those cracks will widen and take the rest of us down.

So thank you for your thought courage in this and other settings, and keep up the fight.

Asked if he would do anything differently, Julian Assange was philosophical:

This is a very deep question about free will.

People do things when they do them; looking back, we were often constrained by our resources, the number of staff, by secrecy that was necessary to protect our sources, and if I could go back and have a lot of extra resources, of course, political approaches, media approaches could have maximised even further the impact, the revelations that we made. But I suppose your question is trying to say, well, were there any knobs that could be turned in hindsight?

I was not from the United Kingdom. I had a good friend in the United Kingdom, Gavin McFadyen, who’s an American journalist, a very good man.

But it took me time to … once I was trapped in the United Kingdom, it took me time to understand what UK society was about. Who I could trust, who I couldn’t trust, the different types of manoeuvres that are made in that society.

There are different media partners that perhaps we could have chosen.

‘I was a political prisoner’: Assange

Next Assange is asked if he saw himself as a political prisoner:

Yes, I was a political prisoner. The political basis for the US government’s retributive acts against me was in relation to publishing the truth about what the US government had done. Then, in a formal legal sense, once the US proceeded with its legal retribution, it used the Espionage Act, a classic political offence.

Seeking asylum ‘an absolutely essential relief valve’ that puts pressure on states’ behaviour: Assange

Julian Assange has been taking questions, including one on political asylum. He says:

Political asylum is an absolutely essential relief valve for human rights abuses within states. That people can leave a state that is persecuting them not only saves individual lives – it provides a mechanism where journalists can continue to report on their societies after they have been hounded out. Ultimately, the threat of people leaving a state is what, the final analysis, controls its behaviour.

We have seen examples in history of states that made it difficult or impossible for people to leave, and we can see how the situation for people living there lapsed. There must be competition between states to be good places for people to live and to work.

The assault on asylum through means of transnational repression is another matter. In my case, it was difficult to find a state that would give asylum that I was able to get to.

There is a big gap in the asylum system for people who are not fleeing their own state, but fleeing an ally of that state or any third state. That was my case. Asylum law does not easily cover the case where, say, an Australian is fleeing persecution by the United States.

Julian Assange finishes by saying freedom of expression is at a “dark crossroads”:

It’s heartening to know that in a world often divided by ideology and interests, there remains a shared commitment to the protection of essential human liberties, freedom of expression and all that flows from it is at a dark crossroad.

I fear that unless institutions like [the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe] wake up to the gravity of the situation, it will be too late. Let us all commit to doing our part to ensure that the light of freedom never dims, that the pursuit of truth will live on, and the voices of the many are not silenced by the interests of the few.

‘Journalists should not be prosecuted for doing their jobs. Journalism is not a crime’: Assange

He goes on to say that in his case, the US government took a “dangerous, dangerous new global legal position” which is that only US citizen have free speech rights.

In my case, the US government asserted a dangerous, dangerous new global legal position. Only US citizens have free speech rights. Europeans and other nationalities do not have free speech rights, but the US claims its Espionage Act still applies to them, regardless of where they are. So Europeans in Europe must obey us secrecy law with no defenses at all. As far as the US government is concerned. Americans in Paris can talk about what the US government is up to, perhaps, but for a French man in Paris to do so is a crime with no defense, and he may be extradited just like me.

The criminalisation of news-gathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere. I was formally convicted by a foreign power for asking for, receiving and publishing truthful information about that power while I was in Europe.

The fundamental issue is simple: journalists should not be prosecuted for doing their jobs. Journalism is not a crime, it is a pillar of a free and informed society.

Julian Assange says Pompeo was influential in the move to try to have him arrested and extradited:

In Michael Pompeo’s memoirs, which I read in my prison cell, the former CIA director bragged about how he pressured the US attorney general to bring an extradition case against me, in response to our publications about the CIA.

Indeed, acceding to Pompeo requests, the US attorney general reopened the investigation against me that Obama had closed, and rearrested Manning, this time as a witness. Manning was held in a prison for over a year, fined $1,000 a day in a formal attempt to coerce her into providing secret testimony against me. She ended up attempting to take her own life.

We usually think of attempts to force journalists to testify against their sources, but Manning was now a source [being forced] to testify against the journalist.

By December 2017, CIA director Pompeo had got his way, and the US government issued a warrant to the UK for my extradition. The UK government kept the warrant secret from the public for two more years while it, the US government and the new president of Ecuador moved to shape the political, the legal and the diplomatic grounds for my arrest.

He goes on to outline the investigation into his work:

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.

This is the testimony of more than 30 current and former US intelligence officials speaking to the US press, which has been additionally corroborated by record seized in a prosecution fought against some of the CIA agents involved. T

he CIA’s targeting of myself, my family and my associates through aggressive, extrajudicial and extraterritorial means, provides a rare insight into how powerful intelligence organizations engage in transnational repression such repressions are not unique. What is unique is that we know so much about this one due to numerous whistleblowers and to judicial investigations in Spain.

CIA ‘drew up plans to kidnap and to assassinate me’ under Mike Pompeo’s direction, Assange says

Next, Julian Assange has addressed the change in US government, from the Obama to the Trump administration:

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 authorised going after my European colleagues, subjecting us to theft, hacking attacks and the planting of false information.

US government’s investigation of WikiLeaks was ultimately ‘legally groundless’: Assange

Julian Assange has continued, saying the leaked footage of the Iraq war published by WikiLeaks “shocked the world”.

When we published Collateral Murder, the infamous gun camera footage of a US Apache helicopter crew eagerly blowing to pieces Iraqi journalists and their rescuers, the visual reality of modern warfare shocked the world, but we also used interest in this video to direct people to the classified policies for when the US military could deploy lethal force in Iraq … and how many civilians could be killed before gaining higher approval. In fact, 40 years of my potential 175-year sentence was for obtaining and releasing those policies.

Let us stop gagging, torturing and killing each other for a change. Get these fundamentals right, and other political, economic and scientific processes will have space to pay, will have space to take care of the rest.

He has gone on to address Chelsea Manning and the beginnings of the US government’s alleged investigation into him and WikiLeaks:

Fourteen years ago, the United States military arrested one of our alleged whistleblowers, Private First Class Manning, a US intelligence analyst based in Iraq. The US government concurrently launched investigation against me and my colleagues.

The US government illicitly sent planes of agents to Iceland, paid bribes to an informer to steal our legal and journalistic work product, and without formal process, pressured banks and financial services to block our subscriptions and to freeze our accounts. The UK government took part in some of this retribution.

Ultimately, this harassment was legally groundless. President Obama’s justice department chose not to indict me, recognising that no crime had been committed. The United States had never before prosecuted a publisher for publishing or obtaining government information. To do so would require a radical and ominous reinterpretation of the US constitution.

Assange says press freedom has been ‘undermined, attacked, weakened’ since he was first incarcerated

Julian Assange has reflected on the changes during his time incarcerated, saying the state of press freedom and journalism is in a worse place:

I regret how much ground has been lost during that time period, how expressing the truth has been undermined, attacked, weakened and diminished. I see more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth and more self censorship. It is hard not to draw a line from the US government’s prosecution of me, its crossing the Rubicon by internationally criminalising journalism to the chilled climate for freedom expression that exists now.

He goes on to speak about what inspired him to establish WikiLeaks, and his interpretation of what they were able to do:

When I founded WikiLeaks, it was driven by a simple dream to educate people about how the world works, so that through understanding we might bring about something better, having a map of where we are lets us understand where we might go.

Knowledge empowers us to hold power to account and to demand justice where there is none. We obtained and published truths about tens of thousands of hidden casualties of war and other unseen horrors about programs of assassination, rendition, torture and mass surveillance, we revealed not just when and where these things happened, but frequently, the policies, the agreements and the structures behind them.

Julian Assange says he is free because he ‘pled guilty to journalism’

Assange has continued, saying that he was incarcerated because he “pled guilty to journalism”:

Justice for me is now precluded, as the US government insisted, in writing into its plea agreement that I cannot file a case at the European court of human rights or even a Freedom of Information Act request over what it did to me as a result of its expedition request.

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 pled guilty to journalism. I pled guilty to seeking information from a source. I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source, and I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was.

I did not plead guilty to anything else. I hope my testimony today can serve to highlight the weakness, the weaknesses of the existing safeguards, and to help those whose cases are less visible, but who are equally vulnerable.

We have embedded a feed of Julian Assange speaking at the Council of Europe at the top of this blog.

‘I never would have seen the light of day’ without all of the advocacy: Julian Assange

He continues, thanking the many people who advocated on his behalf, but adds that those efforts “shouldn’t have been necessary”:

I commend the legal affairs and Human Rights Committee for commissioning a renowned rapporteur, sooner’s daughter to investigate the circumstances surrounding my detention and conviction and the consequent implications for human rights. However, like so many of the efforts made in my case, whether they were from parliamentarians, presidents, prime ministers, the pope, UN officials and diplomats, unions, legal and medical professionals, academics, activists or citizens. None of them should have been necessary. None of the statements, resolutions, reports, films, articles, events, fundraisers, protests and letters over the last 14 years should have been necessary, but all of them were necessary, because without them, I never would have seen the light of day.

Julian Assange makes first public statement since release

Assange has begun by reflecting on the “surreal shift” from prison to speaking at the committee:

The transition from years of confinement in a maximum security prison to being here before the representatives of 46 nations and 700 million people is a profound and a surreal shift. The experience of isolation for years in a small cell is difficult to convey. It strips away one’s sense of self, leaving only the raw essence of existence. I am yet not fully equipped to speak about what I have endured, the relentless struggle to stay alive, both physically and mentally.

Isolation has taken its toll, which I am trying to unwind and expressing myself in this setting is a challenge. However, the gravity of this occasion and the weight of the issues at hand compel me to set aside my reservations and speak to you directly.

Julian Assange is due to appear shortly at a European parliament committee, where he is due to address the committee on his detention and conviction and their effects on human rights.

You can watch below:

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