Some revere him as a hero and admire his courage, others hate him and see him as an enemy of the state and a security risk. Julian Assange is one of the people of our time who, like Elon Musk or Donald Trump, have become household names and at the same time divide people.
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With Wikileaks, an online disclosure platform he founded in 2006, the Australian published thousands of documents that companies and governments had declared secret and that showed war crimes, espionage and corruption. The platform is about uncovering injustices and illegal actions that are supposed to be covered up under the cloak of state security.
Video shows brutal murder of civilians and journalists
Wikileaks’ new type of journalism, which Assange himself calls “scientific journalism”, had also encouraged other long-established media to evaluate the material, which is particularly damaging to the reputation of the USA. These include the British “Guardian”, the “New York Times”, “El Pais” in Spain and the “Spiegel” in Germany. Particularly explosive are the thousands of secret documents about American activities in Iraq and Afghanistan that were leaked to him by then intelligence officer Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning and which he published in 2010. Manning went to prison for this, but a large part of the sentence was waived for the former soldier by former US President Barack Obama.
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Among the footage released was a U.S. military video showing scores of innocent people being murdered in an Iraqi neighborhood of New Baghdad, including two Reuters news employees. The USA wants to bring Assange before a US court for this publication of secret material. The US has repeatedly said that Assange’s actions had endangered US national security and exposed the named people to great danger.
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The maximum prison sentence for his alleged offenses is 175 years. “As his wife, I fear that he will be buried in the deepest, darkest corner of the US prison system until his death,” his wife Stella Assange once wrote in an article for the Australian broadcaster ABC. Assange, who already has an adult son from his first marriage, fathered two children with her while he was still stuck in the Ecuadorian embassy.
Always in conflict with the law
But Assange is not without controversy. The Australian, born in Townsville in 1971, is as highly intelligent as he is difficult. He studied programming, but also mathematics and physics, but never got a degree. He came into conflict with the law even before his Wikileaks activities. In the meantime, he was reported for sexual offenses in Sweden and wanted by Interpol via a red notice. However, the investigation into this was discontinued in 2017.
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And during his rather nomadic youth in Australia – he is said to have attended a total of 37 schools – he was already in trouble with the police because of his hacking activities. The British newspaper “The Guardian” once called him “Australia’s most accomplished hacker” in an article. He also tried his luck politically. He ran for the Australian Senate in the 2013 Australian federal election for the then newly formed Wikileaks Party, but failed to win a seat. After internal disputes, the party ran out of members and was deregistered in 2015.
What could happen next with Julian Assange
Will Julian Assange be extradited to the USA? The High Court in London will decide on this. Depending on the outcome of Assange’s appeal, he could face imprisonment, another visit to court or freedom. Five scenarios at a glance.
Already during his political phase, Assange stayed in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, which had granted him temporary asylum, for fear of being extradited to the USA. When he finally had to leave after seven years, he was arrested by the London police in 2019. Since then, the Australian has been held in the British high-security Belmarsh prison and fought his way through the court system to stop his extradition to the US.
Australia wants to bring Assange home
His home country Australia also recently wanted to prevent this. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told media representatives that the matter had already dragged on for too long. In September 2023, a delegation of politicians of all stripes even traveled from Australia to the USA to speak on behalf of Assange. And in February, the Australian Parliament voted with a large majority that the USA and Great Britain should allow the Wikileaks founder to return home to Australia.
The Assange case is so explosive because it was never an “ordinary extradition case,” as Greg Barns, an Australian lawyer and supporter of Assange, once told the local Australian edition of “The Guardiansaid. The Assange case has allowed countries like China to use it “as a kind of moral equivalence argument.” According to Barns, the case played right into the hands of the Chinese – especially since “the US likes to preach democratic standards and human rights standards around the world.”