DRAD & Assange Defense Host Journalist Reaction Panel to Assange Testimony

On October 1, 2024, Julian Assange broke his silence. The WikiLeaks founder testified before the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) about the chilling effect his detention and conviction has had on human rights. When Assange was detained,The Committee previously found he met PACE’s definition of a political prisoner.

Assange’s testimony marked his first substantive, public comments in over half a decade. Other than his remarks at his sentencing hearing, the public has largely not heard from Assange since his 2019 arrest.

Assange testified, “I eventually chose freedom over unrealizable justice.” He continued:

I want to be totally clear. I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today because after years of incarceration because I plead guilty to journalism. I plead guilty to seeking information from a source. I plead guilty to obtaining information from a source. And I plead guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did not plead guilty to anything else.

Assange highlighted the contribution of advocacy efforts the world over to his eventual release, though noted that, under a just, legal order, their efforts should never have been necessary. He also spoke of the ongoing ramifications of his prosecution for press freedom:

I see more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth and more self censorship. It is hard not to draw a line from the US government’s prosecution of me – its crossing the rubicon by internationally criminalizing journalism – to the chilled climate for freedom of expression now.

Following this historic testimony, Defending Rights & Dissent and Assange Defense convened a reaction panel featuring journalists and human rights experts who have covered the Assange case. The full video can be found below.

Panelists:

• Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law, and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace. A member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, she is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues. She has covered Julian Assange’s case for Truthout.
• Chip Gibbons is the policy director of Defending Rights & Dissent, where he has advised members of Congress on reforming the Espionage Act. In addition to being one of the leading experts on the press freedom implications of the Espionage Act, Chip covered the Assange extradition hearings as a journalist for Jacobin. Chip is currently working on a new history of FBI political surveillance for Verso Book, which explores the role of domestic surveillance in the making of the US national security state. He leads Defending Rights & Dissent’s efforts to use the Freedom of Information Act to compel the FBI to release its files on WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.
• Kevin Gosztola is the author of “Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange.” He is one of the few journalists who reported on both the military court-martial against Chelsea Manning and the extradition proceedings against Assange. He has covered Espionage Act prosecutions and whistleblower cases for nearly 15 years, and Kevin edits The Dissenter Newsletter at TheDissenter.org, which focuses on press freedom, whistleblowers, and government secrecy.

Moderator: Matthew Hoh is the Associate Director of the Eisenhower Media Network. Matt is a former Marine Corps captain and State Department officer and is a disabled Iraq War veteran. In 2009, Matt resigned his post with the State Department in Afghanistan over the escalation of the war by the United States. He is an advisory board member for Assange Defense.”

The link to Assange’s testimony can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/live/Mq85IZMeigc.

Here is the PACE report and PACE statement.