WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said he was released after years of incarceration only because he pleaded guilty to doing “journalism”, warning freedom of expression was now at a “dark crossroads”.

“I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because I pleaded guilty to journalism,” Assange told the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Tuesday.

“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.”

He was addressing the Council of Europe rights body at its Strasbourg headquarters in his first public comments since his release. The Parliamentary Assembly includes lawmakers from 46 European countries.

PACE had issued a report expressing alarm at Assange’s treatment, saying it had a “chilling effect on human rights”.

Assange spent most of the last 14 years either holed up in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London to avoid arrest, or locked up at Belmarsh Prison.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gestures as he arrives in Canberra, Australia, in June [File: Edgar Su/Reuters]

He was released under a plea bargain in June, after serving a sentence for publishing hundreds of thousands of confidential United States government documents.

The trove included searingly frank US State Department descriptions of foreign leaders, accounts of extrajudicial killings and intelligence gathering against allies. Assange returned to Australia and since then had not publicly commented on his legal woes or his years behind bars.

Facing a potential 175-year sentence, “I eventually chose freedom over unrealisable justice … Justice for me is now precluded,” Assange said, referring to the conditions of his plea bargain.

Speaking calmly and flanked by his wife Stella, who fought for his release, he added: “Journalism is not a crime, it is a pillar of a free and informed society.”

“The fundamental issue is simple. Journalists should not be prosecuted for doing their jobs,” said Assange.

‘More impunity, more secrecy’

The WikiLeaks chief said that he could have lost years more of his life had he tried to fight his case all the way.

“Perhaps, ultimately, if it had gotten to the Supreme Court of the United States and I was still alive … I might have won,” Assange said.

“But in the meantime, I had lost 14 years under house arrest, embassy, siege, and maximum security prison.”

“Ground has been lost” during his incarceration, Assange said, regretting that he now sees “more impunity, more secrecy and more retaliation for telling the truth”.

“Freedom of expression and all that flows from it is at a dark crossroads,” he told the hearing of the PACE legal committee.

“Let us all commit to doing our part to ensure the light of freedom never dims and the pursuit of truth will live on and the voices of many are not silenced by the interests of the few,” he said.

Assange was still visibly affected by his experiences, tiring towards the end of the session even as he thanked “all the people who have fought for my liberation”.

The transition from years in a maximum security prison to addressing the European parliamentarians has been a “profound and a surreal shift”, Assange said as he detailed the experience of isolation in a small cell.

“It strips away one’s sense of self, leaving only the raw essence of existence,” he said, his voice cracking while he offered an apology for his “faltering words” and an “unpolished presentation”.

“I’m not yet fully equipped to speak about what I have endured – the relentless struggle to stay alive, both physically and mentally,” Assange said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his wife Stella Assange attend a hearing on his detention and conviction before the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg, France [Stephane Mahe/Reuters]

“It was truly exceptional that he came here today … He needs time to be able to recover,” Stella Assange told reporters after the committee hearing.

“He’s only been free for a few weeks and we’re really just in the process of starting from zero, or from less than zero,” she added.

Asked what the next moves for WikiLeaks might be, the site’s editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson told reporters Assange was “committed as ever to the basic principles that he’s always abided by – transparency, justice, quality journalism”.

Assange’s case remains deeply contentious.

Supporters hail him as a champion of free speech and say he was persecuted by authorities and unfairly imprisoned.

Detractors see him as a reckless blogger whose uncensored publication of ultra-sensitive documents put lives at risk and jeopardised US security.

Assange is still campaigning for a US presidential pardon for his conviction under the Espionage Act. US President Joe Biden, who is likely to issue some pardons before leaving office next January, has previously described him as a “terrorist”.

But Chelsea Manning, the US Army intelligence analyst who leaked documents to Assange, had her 35-year sentence commuted by President Barack Obama in 2017.