WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
World

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

Updated 1821 GMT (0221 HKT) January 4, 2021
Share
08 assange arrest 041108 assange arrest 0411
1 of 23
Julian Assange gestures from a police vehicle on his arrival at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London on April 11, 2019. Assange, founder of the website WikiLeaks, has been a key figure in major leaks of classified government documents, cables and videos.
Jack Taylor/Getty Images
Assange holds a copy of The Guardian newspaper in London on July 26, 2010, a day after WikiLeaks posted more than 90,000 classified documents related to the Afghanistan War. LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images
Assange attends a seminar at the Swedish Trade Union Confederation in Stockholm on August 14, 2010. Six days later, Swedish prosecutors issued a warrant for his arrest based on allegations of sexual assault from two women. Assange has always denied wrongdoing. BERTIL ERICSON/AFP/Getty Images
Assange, in London, displays a page from WikiLeaks on October 23, 2010. The day before, WikiLeaks released approximately 400,000 classified military documents from the Iraq War. LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images
Assange and his bodyguards are seen after a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in November 2010. It was the month WikiLeaks began releasing diplomatic cables from US embassies. FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images
Assange sits behind the tinted window of a police vehicle in London on December 14, 2010. Assange had turned himself in to London authorities on December 7 and was released on bail and put on house arrest on December 16. In February 2011, a judge ruled in support of Assange's extradition to Sweden. Assange's lawyers filed an appeal. Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images
In October 2011, a month after WikiLeaks released more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables, Assange speaks to demonstrators from the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images
Assange leaves the High Court in London in December 2011. He was taking his extradition case to the British Supreme Court. Geoff Caddick/AFP/Getty Images
Assange leaves the Supreme Court in February 2012. In May of that year, the court denied his appeal against extradition. Oli Scarff/Getty Images
Assange addresses the media and his supporters from the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on August 19, 2012. A few days earlier, Ecuador announced that it had granted asylum to Assange. In his public address, Assange demanded that the United States drop its "witch hunt" against WikiLeaks. CARL COURT/AFP/Getty Images
Assange speaks from a window of the Ecuadorian Embassy in December 2012. Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images
Assange addresses the Oxford Union Society from the Ecuadorian Embassy in January 2013. Philip Toscano/PA Images/Getty Images
Assange appears with Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino on the balcony of the embassy in June 2013. Frank Augstein/AP
Assange speaks during a panel discussion at the South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, in March 2014. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Assange attends a news conference inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in August 2014. John Stillwell/AFP/Getty Images
Assange is seen on a video screen in March 2015, during an event on the sideline of a United Nations Human Rights Council session. FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images
Assange, on the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy, holds up a United Nations report in February 2016. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said that Assange was being arbitrarily detained by the governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom. Carl Court/Getty Images
Assange speaks to the media in May 2017, after Swedish prosecutors had dropped their investigation of rape allegations against Assange. But Assange acknowledged he was unlikely to walk out of the embassy any time soon. "The UK has said it will arrest me regardless," he said. "The US CIA Director (Mike) Pompeo and the US attorney general have said that I and other WikiLeaks staff have no ... First Amendment rights, that my arrest and the arrest (of) my other staff is a priority. That is not acceptable." Jack Taylor/Getty Images
Assange was seen for the first time in months during a hearing via teleconference in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2018. The hearing was then postponed due to translation difficulties. Maria Sol Borja for CNN
A van displays images of Assange and Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who supplied thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Friday, April 5. A senior Ecuadorian official said no decision has been made to expel Assange from the embassy. According to WikiLeaks tweets, sources had told the organization that Assange could be kicked out of the embassy within "hours to days." Alastair Grant/AP
A screen grab from video footage shows the dramatic moment when Assange was hauled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy by police on April 11, 2019. Assange was arrested for "failing to surrender to the court" over a warrant issued in 2012. Officers made the initial move to detain Arrange after Ecuador withdrew his asylum and invited authorities into the embassy, citing the Australian's bad behavior. from Ruptly
Assange gestures from the window of a prison van as he is driven into Southwark Crown Court in London on May 1, 2019, before being sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for breaching his bail conditions in 2012. Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images
A sketch depicts Assange appearing at the Old Bailey courthouse in London for a ruling in his extradition case on Monday, January 4. A judge rejected a US request to extradite Assange, saying that such a move would be "oppressive" by reason of his mental health. Elizabeth Cook/PA/AP