Julian Assange to make first public appearance post-release in Strasbourg

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, is set to address the human rights organization Council of Europe next week in a first public appearance since being freed from a British jail, WikiLeaks said Wednesday.

“Julian will be in Strasbourg next week on October 1st. It will be an exceptional break from his recovery as @COE invited Julian to provide testimony for the … Committee’s report into his case and its wider implications,” said Stella Assange, Julian’s wife, on X.

The WikiLeaks founder returned to Australia in June after striking a deal that secured his freedom, but forced him to plead guilty to violating United States espionage law, ending a drawn-out 14-year-old legal saga.

Assange will give evidence to the Strasbourg-based human rights body on Oct. 1, after the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) concluded in a report that he was a political prisoner and called on the U.S. to investigate whether he had been exposed to inhumane treatment.

Legal action against Assange started in 2010 after hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were published. U.S. prosecutors said the massive leak endangered hundreds of lives and that Assange was aware of the dangers, prompting a U.S. criminal investigation to prosecute him under the Espionage Act. 

Assange has always denied any wrongdoing. He has been held in Belmarsh high-security prison since 2019, when he was removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he took refuge for years.