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This unprecedented global effort was needed because of the legal protections that did exist, many existed only on paper, were not effective in any remotely reasonable time. I eventually chose freedom over unrealisable justice after being detained for years and facing a 175-year sentence, with no effective remedy.

Justice for me is now precluded as the US government insisted in writing into its plea agreement that I cannot file a case at the European court of Human rights, or even a freedom of information act request over what it did to me as a result of its extradition request.

I want to be totally clear. I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because 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.

I hope my testimony today can serve to highlight the weaknesses of the existing safeguards and to help those whose cases are less visible but who are equally vulnerable.

As I emerged from the dungeon of Belmarsh, the truth now seems less discernible, and I regret how much ground has been lost during that time period. How expressing the truth has been undermined, attacked, weakened, and diminished. I see more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth and more self-censorship. ...

When we published Collateral Murder, the infamous gun camera footage of a US Apache helicopter crew eagerly blowing to pieces Iraqi journalists and their rescuers, the visual reality of modern warfare shocked the world.

But we also used interest in this video to direct people to the classified policies for when the US military could deploy lethal force in Iraq, and how many civilians could be killed before gaining higher approval. In fact, 40 years of my potential 175-year sentence was for obtaining and releasing those policies.

The practical political vision I was left with after being immersed in the world’s dirty wars and secret operations is simple: let us stop gagging, torturing, and killing each other for a change. Get these fundamentals right and other political, economic, and scientific processes will have space to take care of the rest. ...

However, in February 2017, the landscape change dramatically. President Trump had been elected.

He appointed two wolves in MAGA hats: Mike Pompeo, a Kansas congressman and former arms industry executive as CIA director and William Barr, a former CIA officer as US Attorney General.

By March 2017 Wikileaks had exposed the CIA’s infiltration of French political parties. Its spying on French and German leaders. Its spying on the European Central Bank, European economics ministries, and a standing orders to spy on French industry as a whole. We revealed the CIA’s vast production of malware and viruses, its subversion of supply chains, its subversion of antivirus software, cars, smart TVs, and iPhones.

CIA director Pompeo launched a campaign of retribution. It is now a matter of public record that under Pompeo’s explicit direction, the CIA drew up plans to kidnap and to assassinate me, with the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and authorised going after my European colleagues, subjecting us to theft, hacking attacks and the planting of false information.

My wife and my infant son were also targeted. A CIA asset was permanently assigned to track my wife, and instructions were given to obtain DNA from my six-month-old son’s nappy.

This is the testimony of more than thirty current and former US intelligence officials speaking to the US press, which has been additionally corroborated by records seized in the prosecution brought against some of the CIA agents involved.

The CIA’s targeting of myself, my family, my associates, through aggressive extrajudicial extraterritorial means provides a rare insight into how powerful intelligence organisations engage in transnational repression. Such repressions are not unique. What is unique is that we know so much about this one due to numerous whistleblowers and to judicial investigations in Spain. ...

When powerful nations feel entitled to target individuals beyond their borders, those individuals do not stand a chance unless there are strong safeguards in place and a state willing to enforce them. Without this, no individual has a hope of defending themselves against the vast resources that a state aggressor can deploy.

If the situation were not already bad enough in my case, the US government asserted a dangerous new global legal position. Only US citizens have free speech rights. Europeans and other nationalities do not have free speech rights. But the US claims its espionage act still applies to them, regardless of where they are. So Europeans in Europe must obey US secrecy law with no defences at all as far as the US government is concerned. An American in Paris can talk about what the US government is up to, perhaps. But for a Frenchman in Paris, to do so is a crime with no defence and he may be extradited just like me. ...

The criminalisation of news-gathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere. I was formally convicted, by a foreign power, for asking for, receiving, and publishing truthful information about that power while I was in Europe.

The fundamental issue is simple: journalists should not be prosecuted for doing their jobs.

Journalism is not a crime. It is a pillar of a free and informed society.