“I am not free today because the system worked,” Julian Assange told an assembled group of parliamentarians from across Europe earlier this week. “I am free today because after years of incarceration 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. I did not plead guilty to anything else.”

These words marked Julian Assange’s first public remarks as a free man, and his first significant public comments in over half a decade. Assange gave his last public interview in 2018. From 2019 until June 2024, he had been held in a maximum-security prison, largely unable to speak directly to the public.

Since agreeing to plead guilty under the Espionage Act to what essentially amounts to journalism, Assange has largely avoided the public eye. He has given no interviews and maintains no social media accounts. His wife, Stella, has explained that Assange, who endured what a United Nations expert labeled “torture,” needed time to recover.