THE Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly on Wednesday 2 October voted to confirm that Julian Assange was held a political prisoner in the UK.
On Tuesday, October 1, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stated that if he is free now, it is because he ‘pled guilty to doing journalism’.
‘I want to be absolutely clear: I am not free because the system worked. I am free, after years of imprisonment, because I pled guilty to doing journalism,’ said Assange, who broke his silence after being released in June from the United Kingdom’s Belmarsh maximum-security prison.
‘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 about what that information was. I have not pled guilty to anything else,’ continued Assange, who was deprived of freedom from 2012 to 2024, first at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and then in prison.
Assange’s release was made possible after an agreement with the US Department of Justice, in which he pled guilty to violating the Espionage Act, which carried a 62-month prison sentence that was annulled due to the time he had already served in Belmarsh.
Assange, who considered himself a political prisoner because the US charged him with 18 counts of espionage and computer intrusion, said: ‘The transition from years of imprisonment in a maximum-security prison to appearing before representatives of 46 countries has been a truly profound change.’
The WikiLeaks founder also said that his agreement with US justice prevents him from suing the country over its extradition request and seeking information on what happened, and he claimed that the CIA has remained ‘unpunished’ before his country’s judges.
Assange, who became famous in 2010 after leaking hundreds of thousands of secret or sensitive documents that revealed the United States’ secrets from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, said that ‘journalists must be activists for the truth’.
‘My re-adjustment to the world includes some positive things but also complicated ones, like going back to being a father to a child who has grown up without me. Going back to being a husband,’ Assange said during a nearly hour-and-a-half speech at the Council of Europe.
‘He is still suffering the effects of the harsh conditions he has been subjected to,’ said his wife Stella Assange, who accompanied him on this occasion, and avoided answering whether the Australian plans to publish new reports.
The fact that on Wednesday, October 2, the Council of Europe Assembly was scheduled to vote on a resolution whose draft considered Assange a political prisoner was one of the reasons that led him to accept the ‘exceptional invitation’ from the Council of Europe to address the body on Tuesday, October 1.
- During the programme ‘Con Maduro+’ on Monday, 30 September, 2024, the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, accused the ultra-right of having intentions to overthrow his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, of conspiring against the stability of his country.
Maduro stressed that ‘the same ultra-right who wants to assassinate me is the one who plans to eliminate Petro’, alluding to the international pressure facing the Colombian government.
‘He paid with millions of drug trafficking, a little over $11 million,’ the head of state said, assuring that this equipment was used by (former Colombian President Ivan) Duque to spy in Colombia, Venezuela and much beyond.
The Venezuelan president warned about the deadlines imposed by the United States and paramilitary groups to destabilise the government of Petro before 2025.
He also claimed that America’s goal is to use Colombia as a bastion to attack the Bolivarian Revolution.
‘Let’s not call ourselves deceivers; behind all the plans against Venezuela and Petro, there is a same conspiracy that is directed from the United States,’ he emphasised.
The head of state also called on the Colombian people to remain alert to these threats and urged not to allow the ultra-right to reinstate a hostile government in Colombia.
‘Venezuela is at peace and growing, and we will continue to do so in the coming years,’ he said.
On the other hand, the president also referred to former presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, calling him ‘coward’ for having sought asylum in the Netherlands Embassy after not recognising the election results.
Maduro expressed concern about the possible flight of González Urrutia and the ultra-rightist María Corina Machado, suggesting that they might both be preparing to leave the country.
Maduro stressed that ‘the same ultra-right who wants to assassinate me is the one who plans to eliminate Petro,’ alluding to the international pressure facing the Colombian government.
He also recalled that the anarcho-capitalist of Milei led, in just 11 months, to 40% poverty, millions of Argentines.
‘And this is the project of wild capitalism, fascism, that’s why Milei is a financier for María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia’.
The Venezuelan president denounced, once again, that Milei from the Argentine treasury, paid millions of dollars of the espionage budget to finance the alleged electoral pretensions of the Venezuelan ultra-right, specifically to the terrorist activities of the so-called ‘commanditos’ who intended to cover Venezuela with violence after the re-election victory on July 28.
‘It’s the Zionist project. ‘That project is to end Argentina, which is one of the precious jewels of South America, for its history, for its strength, and the character of its people,’ he concluded.
‘We are living the end of Western domination, of the colonial world, we are living the beginning of a new world and they react to bombs,’ said the constitutional president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros.
He denounced that the US government and Israel’s intent to attack the Arab and Muslim peoples and governments with illegal and criminal bombings.
‘For the first time in history, bombings against civilians were ordered from New York, the headquarters of the United Nations, and the world is silent,’ he denounced.
‘It is the same impunity with which acted Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, fascism that wants to return, but will not. Because it is the beginning of the end of this world of deceit and imperialism.’
In response to questions about the functioning of the UN, President Maduro lamented that the UN system has entered ‘a vacuum and a process of attrition, we might call. We have already had several years of the southern countries questioning the UN, because the decision-making bodies are banned, manipulated and I would say also colonised’.
‘I told Secretary Guterres: unfortunately the key spokesmen of the UN end up playing against peace and against the interests of the peoples of the world,’ said Maduro.
He reported that the UN secretary, António Guterres, is already aware of the evidence and evidence provided by Venezuela on the destabilisation attempts by the US. He denounced that, before the UN, Venezuela has denounced this open and live-streamed terrorist war to colonise the Arab and Muslim world and seize its energy wealth.