WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has made his first public appearance after release from prison, clarifying it right away how he managed to break free after a long judicial odyssey in the UK. "I eventually chose freedom over unrealizable justice," he said, as quoted by Reuters.

Assange spoke at PACE’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights in Strasbourg, which hosted hearings on his detention and conviction. European lawmakers are now supposed to draw a conclusion about how this fits in with human rights professed on the continent.

Assange, 53, returned home to Australia in June this year after a deal reached for his release. As part of it, he pleaded guilty to violating the US espionage law, which ended his 14-year-long imprisonment and litigation in the UK, where he initially hid at the Ecuadorian embassy but was handed over to the British authorities.

"I am free today [after] years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism. 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 said.

In fact, Julian Assange came out to denounce British and American "justice", with an honest trial or justice hardly achievable for him. The WikiLeaks founder's PACE speech was, in fact, a declaration of innocence and myth exposure for freedom of speech or human rights in the West, at least in the United States and Great Britain.

The media group and Assange himself became widely known in 2010 after leaking hundreds of thousands of secret US military documents, and extensive diplomatic correspondence about Washington's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to the American authorities, this was the most powerful blow to US security in the country's entire history.

In 2019, after the shift of power in Ecuador that brought to wheel pro-American president Lenin Moreno, that country deprived Assange of asylum in its UK-based embassy, revoking his Ecuadorian citizenship granted under former President Rafael Correa. Assange was arrested by the British police right on the spot and escorted to prison.

In the United States, Assange was charged with espionage and conspiracy aimed at unlawfully accessing computer information. This started the ball rolling as regards his seemingly endless struggle in the British courts against being extrafited to the United States, where he faced years in prison or even death penalty.

When addressing PACE, the whistleblower said that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had organized a campaign of retribution against him, thus demonstrating intel’s capabilities for extraterritorial repression to the whole world. "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.

Assange noted that the release of data on mass production of malicious software and the CIA’s espionage program prompted its then chief Mike Pompeo to "launch a campaign of retribution" against Assange and his supporters. According to the WikiLeaks founder, there were even plans to kidnap or kill him in London, while his supporters in Europe were facing hacker attacks and theft.

"My wife and my infant son were also targeted, a CIA asset was permanently assigned to track my wife, and instructions were given to obtain DNA from my six-month-old son’s nappy," Assange stressed, referring in his speech to the testimony of 30+ incumbent and former American intel staff voiced in interviews with US press to be later additionally confirmed by records seized during prosecution of certain CIA agents.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s report distributed after Assange's speech referred to him as "political prisoner" and urged an investigation with the UK to find out whether or not he was subjected to inhuman treatment. One may safely assume that the appeal will not get any serious continuation at the end of the day.

Assange himself does not believe in due process of law in the West, which has by and large deprived him of chances to defend himself or seek justice. Speaking at the PACE hearing, Assange said that his plea deal meant a loss of opportunity to ever initiate a case in self-defense against American espionage charges. From a legal point of view, Assange has been sentenced to wearing the label of a "spy" for his entire lifetime. And yet, this does not seem to be causing him any particular trouble.