Julian Assange: how he became the protagonist of one of the biggest espionage scandals in history

For his followers, Julian Assange is a brave defender of the truth. For his critics, he is a publicity seeker who has endangered numerous lives by making public a large amount of sensitive information.

Those who have worked with him describe him as intense, motivated and highly intelligent, with an exceptional ability to decipher computer codes.

Assange created Wikileaks -an online site that publishes confidential documents and images- in 2006and made headlines around the world in April 2010 when he published images showing American soldiers shooting dead 18 civilians from a helicopter in Iraq.

That same year, the Australian was arrested in the United Kingdom (and later released on bail), after Sweden issued an international arrest warrant for accusations of sexual assault.

Assange argued that it was a ploy to eventually extradite him to the United States to face espionage charges, kicking off a legal saga that has now lasted 14 years and has involved five countries.

But the 52-year-old is now in bail and on his way to the Northern Mariana Islands, where he is expected to plead guilty to a single charge on Wednesday after reaching an agreement with US authorities.

It is expected to be released immediatelygiven the time he has already served in prison in the United Kingdom, and that he returns to Australia.

Assange has often been reluctant to talk about his personal history, but media interest since the emergence of Wikileaks has shed some light on his influences.

Born in Townsville, in the Australian state of Queensland, in 1971and his childhood passed without a place of roots since his parents ran a traveling theater company.

Assange became a father at age 18 and custody battles soon followed.

The development of the Internet gave him the opportunity to take advantage of his mathematical talents, although this also caused him difficulties.

In nineteen ninety fiveAssange was accused, along with a friend, of dozens of actions of computer hacking.

Although the hacking group was skilled enough to track down the detectives following them, Assange was eventually captured and pleaded guilty.

He was fined several thousand dollars, and only evaded prison time on the condition of not reoffending.

He ventured into academia and co-wrote a best-selling book about the emerging and subversive side of the internet, before study Physics and Mathematics.

Assange founded Wikileaks in 2006 with a group of like-minded people, creating a “secret mailbox” on the Internet for potential informants.

“[Para] To keep our sources secure, we have had to distribute assets, encrypt everything and move telecommunications and people around the world to activate protective laws in different national jurisdictions,” Assange told the BBC in 2011.

“We’ve gotten good at this and never lost a case or a source, but we can’t expect everyone to make the extraordinary efforts that we do.”

After adopting a style of nomadic liferan Wikileaks from temporary and changing locations.

Assange could go long periods without eating and concentrate on work with very little sleep, according to Raffi Khatchadourian, a New Yorker magazine reporter who spent several weeks traveling with him.

“He creates an atmosphere around him where the people close to him want to take care of him, help him move forward. I would say that probably has something to do with his charisma.”

But it was in 2010 when Wikileaks – and Assange – really rose to fame, with the publication of images of the US helicopter shooting at civilians in Iraq.

He promoted and defended the video, as well as the mass release of classified US military documents on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in July and October this year.

Wikileaks published new batches of documents, including five million confidential emails from the American intelligence company Stratfor.

Soon the page began to struggle to survive, when several American financial institutions began to block donations.

And, shortly after, the Swedish authorities began to pursue him to question him about accusations that he had raped one woman and sexually abused and coerced another in August 2010, while visiting Stockholm to give a lecture.

By the end of 2010, a international arrest warrant against him.

Assange says the encounters were entirely consensual – and the rape accusations were part of a smear campaign politically motivated – and spent a year and a half challenging the order in court.

When the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom rejected the challenge, Assange turned to the then Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa for help, as the two men had expressed similar views in the past.

In June 2012 he requested asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition.

His stay at the embassy was marked by press statements and occasional interviews. She made a submission to the UK’s Leveson inquiry into press standards, saying he had faced “widespread, inaccurate and negative media coverage”.

It was during this time that they began to emerge concerns about your health, But Assange dismissed reports that he would leave the embassy to seek medical treatment.

After passing almost seven years inside the embassyAssange was dramatically dragged out of the facility and arrested by British police on April 11, 2019.

The Ecuadorian president, Lenin Moreno – who said he had “inherited” the situation from his predecessor – tweeted that his country had made “a sovereign decision” to withdraw asylum status.

Moreno and his government were increasingly frustrated with Assange and his refusal to follow the rules they had imposed for his continued stay at the embassy.

There were “repeated violations of international conventions and protocols of daily life” by Assange, Moreno said in a video statement.

But Ecuador had requested that the United Kingdom guarantee that Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face torture or the death penalty, Moreno added.

Assange was taken into custody at a central London police station, accused of failing to surrender to court in 2012, and on May 1, 2019, he was sentenced to 50 weeks in jail.

In the weeks that followed, Swedish prosecutors quickly reopened their investigation into the 2010 rape allegations and the United States publicly accused Assange of violate the Espionage Actrelated to the publication of classified documents in 2010.

The US Department of Justice called the leaks “one of the largest compromises of classified information in US history.”

Wikileaks said the announcement was “crazy” and “the end of national security journalism.”

As Assange prepared to fight extradition to the US, Swedish prosecutors announced that the investigation into the 2010 rape allegation had been abandoned because the evidence against Assange “was not strong enough as to form the basis for filing an accusation.”

Since then, his case has been mired in legal back-and-forth and a series of appeals.

In 2021, a British court ruled in his favor, blocking his extradition, but the US government then successfully appealed.

And just last month, the UK Supreme Court decided that Assange could again appeal the US extradition order.

Meanwhile, Assange has remained in the Belmarsh maximum security prison in London.

It was there, in 2022, where he married his partner of seven years, Stella Moris, a South African lawyer and member of his legal team for a long time.

She is also the mother of two children Assange’s children, who were conceived while Assange lived in the Ecuadorian embassy.

His family has long said his health was steadily and dramatically declining and they feared he would die or commit suicide.

As the saga dragged on, the UK and US faced increasing pressure – from the public campaign and from Assange’s native Australia – to resolve the case.

In February, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the country as a whole shared the view that “enough is enough.”

“This can’t go on and on indefinitely.”

Human rights groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have called for his release, saying his treatment has been cruel and that his case is a threat to press freedom.

He has also earned the support from countless figures of global power and influenceincluding former UK Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbynthe linguist Noam Chomsky, Baywatch star Pamela Anderson and the late fashion icon Vivienne Westwood.

But his critics – who include former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and the retired Republican legislator Mitch McConnell– They say that he is not a journalist and that endangers lives by publishing large quantities of uncensored documents.

After Wednesday’s final hearing in the US territory of Saipan – a Pacific island north of Guam – he is expected to return to Australia and be reunited with his family, who have expressed their relief and gratitude to his supporters.

“I am grateful that my son’s ordeal is finally coming to an end. This demonstrates the importance and power of silent diplomacy,” his mother Christine Assange said in a statement.

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