WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange joked with the press about his mother-in-law, spoke of his time as a political prisoner and called for solidarity with those journalists 'killed in Gaza and Ukraine', during a Q and A session with journalists at a hearing of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights in Strasbourg on Tuesday.

"My re-adaptation to the world, of course, includes some positive but still tricky things. Becoming a father again to children who have grown up without me. Becoming a husband again. Even dealing with a mother-in-law. These are trying family issues. No, she's a very lovely woman, I like her very much," he said, as his wife Stella leaned over and temporarily switched off his mic, to laughter from the assembled press.

The hearing marked his first public appearance since his release from prison in the UK and return to Australia, following a US plea deal in June.

"I was a political prisoner," he told them. "The political basis for the US government's retributive acts against me was in relation to publishing the truth about what the US government had done. Then in a formal legal sense, once the US proceeded with its legal retribution, it used the Espionage Act, a classic political offence."

"This is an important lesson that when a major power faction wants to reinterpret the law, it can push to have the element of the state, in this case the US Department of Justice, do that. And it doesn't care too much about what is legal. That's something for a much later day. In the meantime, the deterrent effect that it seeks, the retributive actions that it seeks, have had their effect," he claimed.

Asked if he would do anything differently if he had his time over again, he told one reporter that it "took me time to understand what UK society was about."

"Who you could trust, who you couldn't trust, the different types of manoeuvres that are made in that society. And there are different media partners that perhaps we could have chosen differently," he said.

Assange added that journalists needed to stick together.

"I can see a similar phenomenon happening with the journalists being killed in Gaza and Ukraine. That the political and geopolitical alignment of media organisations causes them to not cover those victims. Or cover only certain victims. This is a breach of journalistic solidarity. We all need to stick together to hold the line," he said.

"It's good to be back it's good to be amongst people who as we say in Australia who give a damn. It's good to be amongst friends. I would just like to thank all the people who have fought for my liberation and who have understood importantly that my liberation was coupled to their own liberation," he concluded.

The committee has previously criticised Assange's treatment and called for the US to investigate revelations about alleged war crimes and human rights violations highlighted by the WikiLeaks organisation. A debate will take place on Wednesday.

Assange spent five years in Belmarsh, fighting extradition to the US, after being dragged from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London following a seven-year standoff.

He was wanted in the US on 18 charges related to the release of classified documents involving the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and pled guilty to a single charge of espionage at a hearing in the Northern Mariana islands. He was sentenced to time served in Belmarsh and allowed to return home.