Wikileaks founder: Julian Assange will speak out for the first time since his release

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

Concern about health

The Wikileaks founder was surprisingly released at the end of June after 14 years of legal wrangling and returned to Australia. A US court on the Mariana island of Saipan – a US territory in the western Pacific – had previously approved a deal between the Australian and the American judiciary in connection with espionage allegations.

Since then, he has not appeared in public. His wife Stella Assange expressed concern about her husband’s health after his return home from 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, looking ahead to the coming week.

From 2010 onwards, Wikileaks published secret material from whistleblower Chelsea Manning about US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US also accuses Assange of putting the lives of US informants in danger. Assange’s supporters, on the other hand, see him as a brave journalist who brought war crimes to light.

Solitary confinement in a maximum 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 the high-security Belmarsh prison, where he fought legally against extradition to the USA. According to Wikileaks, Assange was held in solitary confinement in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day.