The 53-year-old Assange is scheduled to testify before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s legal affairs and human rights committee in Strasbourg, France.
The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, will speak before the Council of Europe on Tuesday in what will be his first public appearance since his release from prison.
The session will cover Assange’s incarceration and conviction “and their chilling effect on human rights,” according to the Parliamentary Assembly, which is made up of lawmakers from 46 European nations. This is in advance of a debate on the subject on Wednesday.
Assange will personally attend the hearing, according to a statement from WikiLeaks, “because of the extraordinary nature of the invitation.”
Following a protracted legal battle with Justice Department prosecutors in which he entered a guilty plea to acquiring and publishing US military secrets, Assange was freed from British prison in June after serving five years.
He had lived in self-imposed exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for seven years prior to his imprisonment, claiming asylum on the grounds of political persecution.
The Australian online publisher was charged with receiving and disseminating hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and war logs containing information of wrongdoing by the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Advocates for press freedom praised his actions, praising him for exposing military behavior that could have been kept secret otherwise.
A video of an American Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad in 2007 that claimed the lives of 11 people, including two Reuters journalists, was one of the files made public by WikiLeaks.
However, detractors claim that his actions went much beyond what is expected of a journalist and endangered innocent lives, including those of those who supplied intelligence to US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Assange entered his plea in a US federal court in the Northern Mariana Islands, an American commonwealth in the Pacific, bringing the lengthy legal battle to a close.
In response to an allegation under the Espionage Act of planning to obtain and distribute secret national defense information illegally, Assange entered a guilty plea.
He was sentenced by a judge to the five years he had previously served in prison in the UK as he battled to be extradited to the US.
In late June, Assange, again free, made his way back to Australia. Stella, his wife, stated at the time that he wanted time to heal before making public remarks.
His presence on Tuesday coincides with the publication of a report by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe regarding Assange’s five-year incarceration in a high-security UK jail.
The human rights committee of the assembly declared Assange to be a political prisoner and released a draft resolution expressing grave concern over his mistreatment.
