All you need to know about Julian Assange: The founder of WikiLeaks

Julian Assange gained prominence in 2006 with the beginning of WikiLeaks, an online platform for whistleblowers to anonymously submit classified material. The release of footage showing a US Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad, which resulted in the deaths of a dozen people, including two journalists, significantly raised WikiLeaks' profile.

Who is Julian Assange?

An Australian editor and publisher, Julian Assange is best known for founding WikiLeaks, an anti-secrecy website that garnered significant attention for its 2010 release of nearly half a million documents related to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His activism turned him into a prominent figure among press freedom advocates, who argued that his exposure of US military misconduct was akin to the duties of traditional journalists. However, these actions also attracted the ire of American prosecutors. In 2019, while Assange was residing in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, the US released an indictment accusing him of conspiring with an Army private to illegally obtain and publish sensitive government records.

What went wrong?

The Justice Department during the reign of Donald Trump accused Assange of directing former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in one of the largest compromises of classified information in US history. The charges stemmed from WikiLeaks’ publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents. Prosecutors alleged that Assange aided Manning in stealing classified diplomatic cables, jeopardising national security, and conspiring to crack a Defence Department password. The released reports included the names of Afghans and Iraqis who provided information to American and coalition forces, while the diplomatic cables exposed journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates, and dissidents in oppressive regimes.

Manning received a 35-year prison sentence for violating the Espionage Act and other offenses for leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017, leading to her release after about seven years in prison.

Custody in the UK

Assange has spent the last five years in a British high-security prison, fighting extradition to the US. Despite his arrest in 2019 after being evicted from the Ecuadorian Embassy, US extradition efforts had stalled. A UK judge initially rejected the US extradition request in 2021, citing concerns that Assange might harm himself if held under harsh US prison conditions. However, higher courts overturned that decision after receiving assurances from the US about his treatment, leading to the British government signing an extradition order in June 2022.