"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 plead 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 weakness of the existing safeguards and to help those whose cases are less visible but who are equally vulnerable.

As I emerge 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. 

It is hard not to draw a line from the U.S government's prosecution of me, its crossing the Rubicon by internationally criminalizing journalism to the chilled climate of freedom expression that exists now."