WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and wife Stella appeared at a hearing on Tuesday in Strasbourg, France, held by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. [Photo by Chen Weihua / China Daily]

In his first public appearance on Tuesday since his release from the Belmarsh Prison in London on June 24, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange denounced the United States government for the persecution of journalists.

Assange was released after reaching a plea bargain deal with the US Department of Justice for a sentence of 62 months – the time he had served in prison in the UK.

"I eventually chose freedom over unrealizable justice, after being detained for years and facing a 175-year sentence with no effective remedy," the 53-year-old told the court hearing at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. The Council of Europe is an international human rights organization made up of 46 member countries.

Assange expressed that "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 extradition request."

He became the target of the US government since 2010 after WikiLeaks published a series of leaks from Chelsea Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst. They included footage of US airstrikes in Baghdad which killed civilians and Reuters journalists, as well as US military logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and US diplomatic cables.

"I want to be totally clear. I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today because after years of incarceration because I plead guilty to journalism. I plead guilty to seeking information from a source. I plead guilty to obtaining information from a source," he said. "And I plead guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did not plead guilty to anything else."

Assange talked about the US government under the then-CIA director Mike Pompeo of drawing up plans to kidnap and assassinate him in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he sought asylum. His wife Stella and their infant son were also targeted by a CIA asset who was permanently assigned to track them, of which the CIA also gave instructions to obtain DNA from their six-month-old son's nappy.

"The 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," he said.

Thorhildur Sunna Aevarsdottir, the PACE rapporteur for the Assange case, visited him at the Belmarsh Prison in May during a fact-finding trip. She praised Assange for doing what investigative journalists should do.

She said that over the years WikiLeaks has published and revealed gruesome instances of war crimes, forced disappearances, torture, corruption, abductions, and scores of different forms of human rights violations.

"Sadly, instead of prosecuting the perpetrators of the crimes so disclosed, the United States decided to prosecute the whistleblower and the publisher. Instead of convicting war criminals, they convicted the whistleblower and the journalist," she told the hearing on Tuesday.

"We must address this injustice and learn from it so that it may never happen again."

The council had earlier issued a report voicing deep concerns about the detention and conviction of Assange and their chilling effects on human rights.

When questioned by China Daily if she was disappointed that most European leaders had not called for Assange's release, Aevarsdottir said that people found it more difficult to take a stand for Assange than for many other journalists.

"It has to do with who is pursing him, demanding him to be convicted for 175 years in prison," she said.

In replying to China Daily's question whether Assange was still showing signs of physical and mental torture, Assange's wife Stella said "it's clear that Julian has not only suffered in the past, but continues to suffer the effects of very prolonged and extreme torturous harsh conditions that he was subjected to for so many years."

"The priority for us as a family is for him to get better. Everything else is secondary," she said.

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