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I Chose Freedom over Justice, Julian Assange Tells European Lawmakers

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (R) and his wife Stella Assage (L) at the Council of Europe to be auditioned in Strasbourg, France, 01 October 2024. (EPA)
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (R) and his wife Stella Assage (L) at the Council of Europe to be auditioned in Strasbourg, France, 01 October 2024. (EPA)
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I Chose Freedom over Justice, Julian Assange Tells European Lawmakers

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (R) and his wife Stella Assage (L) at the Council of Europe to be auditioned in Strasbourg, France, 01 October 2024. (EPA)
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (R) and his wife Stella Assage (L) at the Council of Europe to be auditioned in Strasbourg, France, 01 October 2024. (EPA)

Julian Assange, the founder of whistleblower media group WikiLeaks, told European lawmakers on Tuesday his guilty plea to US espionage accusations was necessary because legal and political efforts to protect his freedom were not sufficient.

"I eventually chose freedom over an unrealizable justice," Assange said, in his first public comments since his release from prison.

Assange, 53, returned to his home country Australia in June after a deal was struck for his release which saw him plead guilty to violating US espionage law, ending a 14-year British legal odyssey.

"I am free today after years of incarceration because I pleaded guilty to journalism, pleaded guilty to seeking information from sources, I pleaded guilty to obtaining information from a source and I pleaded guilty to informing the public", he added.

Assange was addressing the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights at the Council of Europe, the international organization best known for its human rights convention.

A report by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe concluded Assange was a political prisoner and called for Britain to hold an inquiry into whether he had been exposed to inhuman treatment.

Dressed in a black suit with a burgundy tie and wearing a slight white beard, Assange sat between his wife Stella, and WikiLeaks' editor Kristinn Hrafnsson, reading out his initial remarks from sheets of paper.

"I am yet not fully equipped to speak about what I have endured," he said, adding: "Isolation has taken its toll which I am trying to unwind."

His wife, whom he married while in a London jail, said last month he would need some time to regain his health and sanity after his long incarceration, as well as to be with their two children who he had never seen outside of a prison.

The most controversial leaks by WikiLeaks featured classified US military documents and videos from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early to mid 2000s that it said highlighted issues such as abuse of prisoners in US custody, human rights violations and civilian deaths.

US authorities said the leaks were reckless, damaged national security, and endangered the lives of agents.

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Varieties

UK Designer’s Long-lost Coat Found after 40 Years

Jean Pallant said she is ‘over the moon’ one of her long-lost designs was found in an Oxfam charity shop (Seb Durocher/Oxfam/PA)
Jean Pallant said she is ‘over the moon’ one of her long-lost designs was found in an Oxfam charity shop (Seb Durocher/Oxfam/PA)
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UK Designer’s Long-lost Coat Found after 40 Years

Jean Pallant said she is ‘over the moon’ one of her long-lost designs was found in an Oxfam charity shop (Seb Durocher/Oxfam/PA)
Jean Pallant said she is ‘over the moon’ one of her long-lost designs was found in an Oxfam charity shop (Seb Durocher/Oxfam/PA)

A British fashion designer has revealed one of her long-lost designs has been found in an Oxfam charity shop - nearly 40 years after it went missing from the designer’s warehouse, The Independent reported.

When designer Jean Pallant was told her one-of-a-kind coat had turned up in a donation bag at the Oxfam shop in Mill Hill, London, she was “very excited,” the newspaper said.

“I was absolutely over the moon, really. It was very sweet of the person who discovered it to believe that it was something important,” she was quoted as saying.

“It’s like seeing a child. It’s lovely. I know every single square inch of it, and I’m absolutely amazed that it looks so new, and it feels new. Everything about it looks exactly as it did when it went missing.”

Oxfam’s Mill Hill shop manager Marina Ikey-Botchway said she could tell the coat was a priceless item when the donation came in.

She made the discovery among a donation of high street fast fashion clothes.

“The very first second I saw the coat I knew this was something special, so I checked the label and after a quick Google found Jean’s email,” she said.

Pallant, who was part of the 1960s cultural revolution and one half of a husband-and-wife team, made the orange coat with large buttons on her kitchen table in 1988 and it featured in a Sunday Telegraph article that year.

When she went to retrieve some pieces from her warehouse nearly four decades ago, she felt “sick” to discover that the coat had gone missing along with five other pieces she had designed with her husband Martin, which still have not been found.

“It doesn’t look as if it’s ever been worn, so I’m thrilled about that as well. It doesn’t look like a rag. It doesn’t even smell of must, which is weird. I don’t know where it’s been for those years, but it’s obviously been well cared for,” said Pallant.