Australia Julian Assange to speak out for the first time since his release

Three months after the release of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the Australian will make his first public statement next week. The 53-year-old will travel to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg to testify before the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights on Tuesday, Wikileaks announced. The following day, October 2, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe will discuss a new report on Assange's case.

"The report confirms that Assange can be classified as a prisoner of conscience and calls on the UK to launch an independent investigation into whether he was subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment," Wikileaks wrote.

Concerns about his health

The Wikileaks founder was unexpectedly released at the end of June after a 14-year legal tug-of-war and returned to Australia. A US court on the Mariana Island of Saipan - a US foreign territory in the Western Pacific - had previously approved a deal between the Australian and the American judiciary in connection with espionage allegations.

He has not appeared in public since then. His wife Stella Assange had expressed concern about her husband's state of health after his return home following years of imprisonment in a tiny cell. She asked that the family be given time and that their privacy be respected. Wikileaks has now announced that Assange is still recovering from his long imprisonment. "He is attending this meeting in person due to the exceptional nature of the invitation," it said with a view to next week.

Since 2010, Wikileaks has published secret material from whistleblower Chelsea Manning on US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The USA also accuses Assange of endangering the lives of US whistleblowers. Assange's supporters, on the other hand, see him as a courageous journalist who brought war crimes to light.

Solitary confinement in a high-security prison

Assange had been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years. He was arrested there in 2019 and subsequently held in Belmarsh maximum security prison, where he legally fought extradition to the USA. According to Wikileaks, Assange spent 23 hours a day in solitary confinement in a tiny cell.