After a legal battle spanning more than a decade, WikiLeaks founder and whistleblower Julian Assange finally walked a free man. He returned to his homeland Australia aboard a charter jet on June 26, hours after pleading guilty with US Justice Department prosecutors for obtaining and publishing military secrets.
Who Is Julian Assange?
Born in 1971 as Julian Hawkins in Townsville, Australia, Julian Assange's parents Christine and Shipton separated soon after his birth.
When he was a year old, his mother married travelling actor and theatre producer Brett Assange (whom Julian Assange regards as his father). He would, however, later go on to register the WikiLeaks domain name under Shipton’s name because he believed to have gotten his ‘rebel’ gene from him.
In his teens, Julian Assange discovered a natural proficiency for computing and began to teach himself code. By 1987, when he was all of 16, Assange had become a skilled hacker and was using the name ‘Mendax’.
Around the same time, he joined hands with two other hackers to launch the ‘Institutional Subversives’ and infiltrate America’s most sensitive government computer systems. Soon enough, found himself under the radar of the authorities.
However, his first brush with the law came in 1991, when he was arrested on 31 counts of computer-related crime. He was released after coughing up a fine. According to The Guardian, by the time this happened, Assange had earned the reputation of Australia’s most accomplished hacker.
Assange had briefly worked as a computer security consultant before launching WikiLeaks in 2006. He used the platform to leak thousands of classified documents from various government and corporate entities.
The Story Behind His Arrest & Release
Assange’s legal battle, however, began in the year 2010. He was arrested in Britain on a European arrest warrant on charges of sexual assault, which were later dropped. To avoid extradition, he fled to Ecuador’s embassy and stayed there for seven years.
In 2018, he was charged by the United States for violating terms of the US Espionage Act. Ecuador withdrew his asylum the following year and the UK police arrested him for skipping bail. Since then, he had been lodged in a top security British prison in Belmarsh, fighting US extradition requests for five years almost.
Eventually, in February 2024, A motion was passed by the Australian parliament, urging the UK and US governments to allow Assange to return to his homeland. In April, US President Joe Biden announced he is considering a request to drop the prosecution against him.
He finally walked free and returned to Australia on June 26, 2024, after agreeing to a plea deal with the US prosecution, as per which he pleaded guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents.
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