Julian Paul Assange ( ə-SAHNZH; né Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. He came to international attention in 2010 after WikiLeaks published a series of leaks from Chelsea Manning, a United States Army intelligence analyst: footage of a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad, U.S. military logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and U.S. diplomatic cables. Assange has won multiple awards for publishing and journalism.
Assange was raised in various places around Australia until his family settled in Melbourne in his middle teens. He became involved in the hacker community and was convicted for hacking in 1996. Following the establishment of WikiLeaks, Assange was its editor when it published the Bank Julius Baer documents, footage of the 2008 Tibetan unrest, and a report on political killings in Kenya with The Sunday Times. Publication of the leaks from Manning started in February 2010.
In November 2010 Sweden wished to question Assange in an unrelated police investigation and sought to extradite him from the UK. In June 2012, Assange breached his bail and took refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London. He was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012 on the grounds of political persecution and fears he might be extradited to the United States. In 2013, he launched the WikiLeaks Party and unsuccessfully stood for the Australian Senate. Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation in 2019.
On 11 April 2019, Assange's asylum was withdrawn following a series of disputes with Ecuadorian authorities. The police were invited into the embassy and he was arrested. He was found guilty of breaching the United Kingdom Bail Act and sentenced to 50 weeks in prison. The U.S. government unsealed an indictment charging Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion related to the leaks provided by Manning. In May 2019 and June 2020, the U.S. government unsealed new indictments against Assange, charging him with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and alleging he had conspired with hackers. Assange was incarcerated in HM Prison Belmarsh in London from April 2019 to June 2024, as the U.S. government's extradition effort was contested in the UK courts.
In June 2024, Assange agreed to a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors. He pleaded guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defence documents in return for a sentence of time served. Following the hearing Assange flew to Australia, arriving on 26 June.
Source : Wikipedia
