The West "double standard", the United Kingdom finally approved assange's extradition to the United States
A mysterious decryption site, and a discredited computer genius
He is the "eye nail" of the United States, the "Robin Hood" of the Internet.
Others call him "007 in the press"
Again and again, he revealed secrets that could not be told
Push the United States and its allies to the cusp of public opinion again and again, and let the world be in chaos
What impact will assange's extradition have on U.S. politics?
Now three years after Assange was held in London's highest-security Belmar prison, on June 17, Home Secretary Patel signed an order on behalf of the British government to extradite WikiLeaks founder Assange to the United States for trial.
Assange will face 17 counts of espionage and 1 count of improper use of computers brought to him by the U.S. government, and if convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison.
As the founder of WikiLeaks, Assange was a household name a decade ago. But in recent years, because he has been restricted from making public appearances, he has rarely been actively talked about.
Born on July 3, 1971 in Townsville, Australia, Assange lived a wandering life as a child due to family circumstances. Assange transferred 37 schools in elementary and secondary schools, and later attended 6 universities, but he failed to complete his studies.
At the age of 14, computers broke into his life, and he became obsessed with programming. As a teenager, Assange had become Australia's most famous hacker.
Growing up gave Assange a "Robin Hood chivalrous spirit", and the seeds of "WikiLeaks" were planted. On October 4, 2006, Assange signed up for WikiLeaks, and his life changed forever.
On the website's homepage, WikiLeaks says its main interest is in exposing tyranny and government and corporate unethical behavior. Assange positioned the site as a platform that could not track leakers, allowing whistleblowers to publish confidential documents with confidence.
- In December 2006, WikiLeaks published its first document pointing out that Somali opposition leader Avis intended a coup d'état and was preparing to overthrow the Somali government by assassination.
- In 2007, WikiLeaks exposed former Kenyan President Moi's 24-year reign that he embezzled $1 billion in state assets, colluded with drug lords to print counterfeit money, and then President Kibaki's weakness and compromise with the Moi family, and the original prestigious Kibaki was criticized, narrowly winning the Kenyan election by a narrow margin of only 2%.
- In 2009, WikiLeaks exposed the records of correspondence between senior Peruvian government officials and wealthy domestic businessmen, thus exposing the public to the truth about corruption in the country's domestic oil industry, an event that continued to ferment and led to internal political unrest in Peru.
- Not long after, WikiLeaks broke the news again, revealing the internal documents of Iceland's largest bank, uncovering the bank's debt problems and illegal transactions, and as a result, Iceland broke out of the financial crisis.
People began to marvel at how much classified information such a website could obtain, and Assange's name attracted the world's attention.
From some confidential documents released by WikiLeaks in the early days, it can be seen that the countries involved in those documents are mostly small countries in Africa, South America, Northern Europe and other regions. In fact, Assange has long been in possession of a large number of secrets about the United States, but assange is hesitant to expose American secrets. He knew that once it angered the United States, the United States would never give up.
But isn't the creation of WikiLeaks a decryption, a leak, a leak? Finally, WikiLeaks finally unraveled the secrets of the United States of America. Assange is in the limelight, and at the same time, disaster is imminent.
- In 2007, WikiLeaks exposed the brutal details of the Trial of Prisoners in custody issued by the U.S. Department of Defense's Guantanamo Prison Management Guidebook, sparking global protests.
- On April 5, 2010, Assange released a video taken by WikiLeaks from U.S. soldiers from a 2007 war in Iraq to more than 40 reporters in attendance at the National Press Club. U.S. troops in Iraq opened fire on civilians in an Apache military helicopter, and the laughter of U.S. military commanders in the video can still be clearly heard. The attack killed at least 18 people, including two Reuters journalists. As soon as this video was exposed, it shocked the world. At this point, the United States finally became angry and stared at Assange, who exposed the video.
- On July 26, 2010, Assange's WikiLeaks published up to 92,000 secret documents of U.S. troops in Afghanistan online through The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Mirror. In these documents, 144 cases of indiscriminate killing and manslaughter of civilians caused by NATO forces were exposed, resulting in a total of 195 civilian deaths and 174 injuries. And these documents are only a small part of the public.
Technically, WikiLeaks, as an Internet platform, does not bear any obligation of confidentiality. WikiLeaks did not directly hack secret documents, it simply made secrets provided by others public, was an indirect disseminator, and did not violate U.S. law. Therefore, the United States could not think of a way to clean up Assange for a while, and Assange temporarily evaded the legal sanctions of the United States.
But the Australian government, Assange's homeland, in keeping with the will of the United States, began to closely monitor and investigate him, and Assange began a life of wandering the world. At the age of 39, he had no place to live, traveled all over the world, and carried a computer with him.
- On August 11, 2010, he traveled to Sweden to open a press office for WikiLeaks. As soon as Assange's plane landed, Western intelligence agents told him that the U.S. government privately admitted that it was difficult to legally prosecute Assange, but had begun discussions about dealing with it by other means. Soon an allegation against Assange fell from the sky, with Swedish prosecutors accusing him of sexually assaulting two women during his stay in Sweden.
- On November 18, 2010, the Stockholm District Court in Sweden issued a warrant for Assange's arrest, but Assange did not compromise and quickly left Sweden for the United Kingdom.
- In response, ten days later, WikiLeaks released 250,000 secret U.S. diplomatic cables, which not only involved their offensive and ridiculous remarks about the heads of state, but even more appallingly, Hillary Clinton, then U.S. Secretary of State, had asked U.S. diplomats to secretly collect DNA from senior U.N. officials. As soon as the "telegraph gate" came out, it triggered a crisis in US diplomacy.
- On December 1, 2010, Interpol, at the request of the Swedish police, issued red notices against Assange to 188 extradited member states.
Assange saw it as a conspiracy by the United States, claimed the allegations were for political purposes and refused to come to Sweden to be investigated. To prove his innocence, Assange turned himself in to the police in London in December 2010.
A hacker whose goal is to expose the truth and attract the world's attention, was thus imprisoned for sexual assault. On December 13, 2010, Assange became the cover character of Time Magazine. A few days later, Assange's team of lawyers raised up to £240,000 and Assange was released on bail.
After his release from prison, Assange was working on a sexual assault complaint while resolving and dealing with the U.S. blockade of WikiLeaks. In February 2011, the United Kingdom ruled to extradite Assange to Sweden, after which Assange failed several unsuccessful appeals, and in June 2012, the British Supreme Court finally rejected Assange's anti-extradition appeal, and as a last resort, Assange disguised himself as a courier to seek political asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in the United Kingdom.
In an 18-square-meter room at the Ecuadorian Embassy in the UK, Assange embarked on a seven-year-long journey of fasting, where he continued to challenge his power.
WikiLeaks continues to expose political stars. In the 2016 U.S. election, WikiLeaks published top-secret emails from Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, exposing a series of scandals such as Hillary Clinton's collusion with party leaders for political purposes, and participation in money laundering and media manipulation.
After Hillary Clinton's "mail door", it affected the attitude of most American voters and became an element of Trump's successful rise to power.
In 2017, Moreno took office as Ecuador's new president, and he publicly referred to Assange as a legacy problem and embarrassment, and relations between the two sides took a sharp turn for the worse.
But there is also good news, on May 19, 2017, Swedish prosecutors said they would stop the investigation into Assange's sexual assault case and end the seven-year standoff. However, British police said that if Assange left the Ecuadorian embassy in Britain, the United Kingdom would still arrest him on the grounds that he had violated international bail agreements during the bail of the 2012 sexual assault case. Despite multiple coercion, Assange was forced to continue to live in the Ecuadorian embassy.
In 2019, Ecuador revoked assange's political asylum, and on April 11 of the same year, the British police dragged Assange out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in the United Kingdom to escort him to a police car, which shocked the world.
On May 1, 2019, a British court sentenced Assange to 50 weeks in prison for deserting bail, holding him in Belmarsh Prison in London.
For Assange, there was great news in late May – Australia had replaced prime minister with Albanes, who supported and sympathized with him, as prime minister.
Albanes has been dubbed by the British media as a "supporter of the wikileaks co-founders.") Last year, when Albanes was not prime minister, he said: "It makes no sense for Britain to imprison Assange and for the United States to hunt him down." ”
At the time, Albanes questioned the person who leaked U.S. secrets to the WikiLeaks website, Chelsea. Why is Manning not in jail, and why are the people who published these secrets in The Uk behind bars, waiting to be extradited by the US?
Less than a month after Albanes became Prime Minister of Australia, the British government approved Assange's extradition to the United States for trial. At this time, Albanes, as the prime minister of Australia, instigated him, and he changed his mouth. He said he would not call on the United States to drop the charges against Assange. Albanes said he needs to lead a government that communicates well with the U.S. government. Albanes told the truth about Australia-US relations, that is, Australia cannot talk nonsense to the United States, otherwise Australia-US relations will become unsmooth.
This is really, the American boss can't afford to provoke, asking for more blessings for Assange.
July 3 at 19:15 p.m
Big News, Big History tells you
Assange, have to say the secret
Edit: Wu Qiong