Assange's Embassy in Ecuador in the UK (August 2014)
Julian Paul Assange, born in Australia on 3 July 1971, became a hacker online in 1987 under the name Mendax in 1987, and in 1991 Australian police searched his melbourne residence as Assange hacked into other computers. Police found that Assange had used a modem to hack into a computer system at an Australian university and Canada's Nortel network. In 1992, Assange pleaded guilty to 24 charges related to hacking into computer systems. After being fined $2100 for good performance, Assange was released on bail.
After creating WikiLeaks, Assange once said, "[The media always mentions my previous hacking experiences], it's really annoying." Just because I've published books with others before, and there are documentaries about it, people talk about it, and the media uses copy-paste tricks. People forget that it was twenty years ago. I can still see articles calling me a computer hacker, which really annoys me. Not because I think it's my disgraceful history; No, I'm proud of that experience. Just because I'm now a wikiLeaks spokesperson, the media has flipped through old accounts. I think the motivation behind this and the hints that are trying to give must be very clear.
November 2009
Assange in Copenhagen in 2009
On November 18, 2010, police in An Interpol member state of Sweden issued a red notice-level arrest warrant against Assange, who was charged with sexual misconduct. At the request of Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny, the court issued an arrest warrant. Prosecutors want assange to be detained for questioning. The allegations relate to what happened between Assange and the two women in Sweden in August 2010, and Assange's lawyers say the women have said their sexual relationship was consensual. Assange said the accusations against him were part of an attempt to defame him after a campaign was launched. But Claes Borgstrom, the woman's lawyer, said Assange knew he was spreading a rumor he didn't believe. Borgstrom pointed out that Assange had no regard for the influence of the rumor on the two women.
WikiLeaks Swedish coordinators say the incident has nothing to do with the CIA, which is believed to be behind it; He said that if Assange complied with the two women's request for an AIDS medical test, Assange might not have been prosecuted. Assange claimed that he and his friends had received death threats from the U.S. military on several occasions.
WikiLeaks released a series of declassifications provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning (Bradley Manning, Bradley Manning) in 2010 that attracted international attention. Since its inception, WikiLeaks has published a considerable number of classified documents, including videos of the murder incidental to the airstrikes in Baghdad by U.S. forces (April 2010), acts of war in Afghanistan, extrajudicial executions in Kenya, U.S. Diplomatic Telegraph incidents (November 2010), documents on the dumping of toxic waste in Côte d'Ivoire, Scientology handbooks, etc. On November 28, 2010, WikiLeaks and other media partners began publishing secret U.S. diplomatic cable incidents. After the 2010 leak, the U.S. government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks.
On December 7, 2010, Assange reported his arrest to the London police in the United Kingdom; Later that same day, the court refused to release Assange on bail and temporarily imprisoned him in a secret location. If the British authorities extradite him to Sweden for trial, he said he would fight to the end.
Sources in the Russian presidential office have revealed that the Kremlin is considering recommending that non-governmental organizations nominate Assange as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, which was later set as a joke by the spokesman of the Russian presidential office.
On December 14, 2010, Assange was granted bail after paying about $315,000 in bail.
Before becoming the spokesperson and editor of WikiLeaks, Assange was a physics and math student, programmer, and hacker. He has travelled to various countries, has no place to live, and has occasionally appeared in public to articulate his views on press freedom, censorship and investigative journalism.
Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in the UK in 2012
On April 4, 2019, WikiLeaks tweeted a message from a senior Ecuadorian government source saying that Assange would be deported under the pretext of scandal and that an agreement was reached with the United Kingdom to arrest him.
On 11 April 2019, the Metropolitan Police said it had been approved by officials at the Ecuadorian Embassy in the UK to enter and arrest Julian Assange. He was convicted of offences against the Bail Act and sentenced to 50 years' imprisonment. The U.S. government filed an indictment against Assange over the leak provided by Manning. On May 23, 2019, the U.S. government further charged Assange with violating the Espionage Act of 1917. Editors of newspapers such as The Washington Post and The New York Times, as well as press freedom groups, have criticized the administration's decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act, describing the decision as an attack on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees press freedom.
On January 4, 2021, British magistrate Vanessa Baraitser rejected the U.S. request to extradite Assange, saying the law would be "oppressive" given concerns about Assange's mental health, Wall's risk of suicide. On January 6, 2021, Assange was denied bail pending an appeal from the United States. On December 10, 2021, the UK Supreme Court in London ruled that Assange could be extradited to the United States to face charges. In March 2022, britain's Supreme Court denied Assange permission to appeal. On 17 June 2022, Home Secretary Pritty Patel approved the extradition. On July 1, 2022, Assange announced a formal appeal against the extradition order.
Since April 2019, Assange has been held in London's highest security level, HM Prison Belmarsh.