Julian Assange, the 52-year-old Australian preventing extradition from Britain to the USA, is to some a fearless campaigner for press freedom. To others, he was reckless with categorized data, probably compromising sources.
Assange is the figurehead of the whistleblower web site that uncovered authorities secrets and techniques worldwide, most notably the explosive leak of US army and diplomatic information associated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He spent greater than a decade in custody or holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London, attempting to keep away from extradition – first to Sweden to reply rape expenses, after which to the US.
Born in Townsville, Queensland, in 1971, Assange had an itinerant childhood and claims to have attended 37 faculties earlier than settling in Melbourne.
As a teen he found a expertise for pc hacking, which quickly introduced him to the eye of the Australian police.
He admitted many of the expenses in opposition to him, for which he paid a effective.
Assange launched WikiLeaks in 2006 with a bunch of like-minded activists and IT consultants.
“We’re creating a brand new commonplace for a free press,” Assange instructed AFP in August 2010.
– Asylum Embassy –
His authorized saga started the identical 12 months, shortly after he printed revelations from categorized paperwork about US army campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was adopted by accusations of rape in Sweden, which he constantly denied.
He was in Britain when Sweden requested his extradition, which he prevented when Ecuador granted him political asylum and allowed him to stay within the London embassy.
For seven years starting in 2012, Assange lived in a small residence within the embassy, ​​exercising on a treadmill and utilizing a sunlamp to compensate for the dearth of pure gentle in a state of affairs he likened to residing on an area station.
Nonetheless, his prolonged keep within the mission got here to an finish after a brand new authorities in Quito handed him over to British police in April 2019. He was arrested for top bail and jailed.
Swedish prosecutors dropped the rape investigation, saying in 2019 that regardless of a “credible” story from the alleged sufferer, there was inadequate proof to proceed.
However as Assange had feared, it was subsequently revealed that Washington charged him with violating the US Espionage Act over the 2010 leaks.
His supporters, together with Chinese language dissident artist Ai Weiwei and the late designer Vivienne Westwood, claimed the fees had been politically motivated.
They’ve repeatedly expressed concern in regards to the bodily and psychological toll of his extended incarceration.
Nils Melzer, the UN particular rapporteur on torture, has condemned circumstances in London’s Belmarsh jail, the place Assange is being held, saying the “progressively extreme struggling inflicted on him” quantities to torture.
– Russia claims –
Assange was initially supported by human rights teams and newspapers that after labored with him to edit and publish US conflict logs.
They embrace a leaked video exhibiting how a US army Apache helicopter killed two journalists and a number of other Iraqi civilians on a Baghdad avenue in 2007.
However many had been shocked when WikiLeaks dumped unredacted paperwork on-line, together with the names of informants, and Assange fell out along with his media companions.
US legal professionals have admitted that whereas they had been “conscious” of sources who disappeared after WikiLeaks printed their names, “it can’t be confirmed that their disappearance was the results of their publicity by WikiLeaks.”
Questions additionally arose about Assange’s relationship with Russia.
Particular counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into interference within the 2016 US presidential election gained by Donald Trump discovered that the Russians “appeared” to have hacked Democrat Hillary Clinton’s marketing campaign after which “distributed that materials publicly by way of varied intermediaries, together with WikiLeaks ‘.
However Assange’s lawyer claimed throughout a courtroom listening to that former US President Donald Trump had promised a pardon if his consumer testified that Russia had not supplied the emails that so broken Clinton.
Trump angrily rejected accusations that his marketing campaign colluded with the Kremlin — claims discovered unfounded by the Mueller investigation.
Assange is the daddy of two younger boys along with his spouse Stella, a South African-born lawyer, whom he met whereas she was engaged on his case.
