The story of Julian Assange
Shortened Version
Julian Assange grew up in Australia, studying programming, mathematics, and physics. At the age of 16, Assange began hacking under the name “Mendax,” which soon attracted the attention of the Australian Federal Police, leading to a raid on his home. However, he never caused any damage, being primarily driven by curiosity for knowledge. The judge acknowledged this and let him off with just a small fine. As a teenager, Assange believed that everyone should have access to information. He also used his technical knowledge to help people, including assisting the Victoria Police Child Exploitation Unit with criminal prosecutions.
In 2006, he helped established WikiLeaks, a non-profit organisation publishing unedited classified media from anonymous sources as to expose injustice. WikiLeaks goal was to promote information transparency and holding powerful entities accountable. Their website was built to withstand any kind of attack; running on servers in an underground nuke-proof bunker. Many of the published material had been classed as secret; drone strikes in Yemen, corruption in the Arab world, executions by Kenyan police, Tibetan unrest in China, Oil scandal in Peru, US cyber-attacks on Iran’s nuclear plants.
The WikiLeaks website was receiving about 30 submissions a day, and Julian published what he thought the public should know about. Many of the published materials shocked the world, headline news articles followed, drawing a lot of attention on Julian.
It was when he published US government secrets that things became very difficult. In 2010, WikiLeaks received a large number of secret US files, including an encrypted video showing a US Apache helicopter from the Eighth Cavalry Regiment shooting at several innocent citizens, including children going to school and media staff. At least 18 people died that day. A helicopter crew member was heard saying: “Nice shooting.” When it emerged that two children in a van had also been injured, someone else said: “Serves them right for bringing their children into a battle.” After publishing the video titled “Collateral Murder”, most news coverage focused on the illegal release of secret files, rather than the shocking murder of innocent people that had been uncovered. None of the military personnel involved were ever convicted.
Later that year, they released over 250,000 US government internal messages, an event known as Cablegate, which exposed the inner workings of US diplomacy and had significant international repercussions.
Soon after this, the Swedish police issued an international arrest warrant for Julian, seeking his extradition to Sweden to be interviewed about possible rape charges against him. From the victim’s own statements, it appeared the sex was consensual; the issue was that he had not used a condom during sex, which is considered rape under Swedish law. The timing of this suggested possible US involvement. Swedish police had conducted similar interviews before, where the interviewer visited the accused in their country, but in this case, they insisted Julian had to come to them. Julian said that if the US government publicly stated they would not attempt to extradite him to the US while he was in Sweden, he would willingly go for the interview, but no such statement ever appeared.
Julian was in the UK, and in 2012, the UK court decided to action the international arrest warrant and send him to Sweden. Julian knew that going to Sweden would ultimately lead to his extradition to the US, so he sought help from other countries. Ecuador offered him asylum, assuring his safety in their London embassy. Julian ultimately lived in the embassy for the next seven years.
In 2016, WikiLeaks published many of Hillary Clinton’s emails, which highlighted corruption. This was probably the biggest influential factor in Hillary not being elected as president. The emails showed how she and her party manipulated many events, including decisions to favour Hillary over their more popular candidate Bernie Sanders (which led to their party chairwoman being fired), and a crafty decision to help promote the opposition’s weakest candidate in the hope that his apparent popularity would get him picked. But largely due to these leaks, the final battle between Hillary and Trump ultimately failed, leaving the weakest candidate becoming the president of America.
Hillary had claimed her emails were originally hacked by Russia, but the US intelligence admitted years later that there were no evidence to suggest Russia was involved in this leak, the documents were actually downloaded internally and sent to Julian.
In 2017, Ecuador had a new president who was already in secret communication with the US government. The internet access Julian was using in the embassy was suddenly blocked, and the embassy had a new security team that installed cameras to monitor Julian and listen in on his legal team. Footage from these cameras was later discovered to have been passed to the US government. The same security team also spread false claims about Julian and was discovered later that the the CIA was plotting ways to kill him.
In 2019, Ecuador invited UK police to come and arrest Julian, dragging him to a police van that led to a jail cell in London. Later that year, Sweden closed their case, stating that the evidence they had was too weak to prosecute.
While in jail, many rumours of mistreatment and ill health have surfaced, while the US government has formally requested the UK court to hand him over for crimes of espionage.
2024 update
In June 2024, a deal was reached involving the leaders of Australia, the UK government, and the US Department of Justice. It was considered that even if convicted, Julian had already served a 5 year long sentence, and so would likely get an immediate release. Due to widespread public support for Julian, politicians were divided between those supporting him and those opposing him. Politicians started to view his release more favourably, particularly in light of upcoming elections.
All charges were dropped except for one: violating the Espionage Act. As part of the agreement, he agreed (signed an affidavit) to cease requesting information from the US, and instruct WikiLeaks to return/destroy unpublished documents, including those listed in the US no-fly list. This was despite the judge’s finding that “there is no evidence that any harm has befallen any individual anywhere in the world as a result of Mr. Assange’s publications”
Julian heading home to Australia via a visit to the US court to finalise the plea deal. The US court in Saipan Island was chosen for its proximity to Australia. Julian briefly appeared there before traveling on to Australia, landing in Canberra where his family greeted him with much media attention.
