WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange said today that he was freed after five years of incarceration because he had “pleaded guilty to journalism.”

Mr Assange, making his first public remarks since his release from Belmarsh prison in south-east London, gave evidence of the impact of his detention and conviction to the legal affairs and human rights committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France. 

He was freed in June after pleading guilty to obtaining and publishing US military secrets in a deal with US Justice Department prosecutors.