Julian Assange is the editor of WikiLeaks and had many troubles with the law! He was arrested on April 11th, 2019!
So let’s find out some trivia and facts about him!
- His full name is Julian Paul Assange
- He was born on 3 July, 1971
- He is an Australian computer programmer
- And the editor of WikiLeaks
- He is currently in police custody in London after having been arrested on 11 April 2019 by the Metropolitan Police Service
- He was arrested for breaching his bail conditions in December 2010
- Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006
- He came to international attention in 2010
- When WikiLeaks published a series of leaks provided by Chelsea Manning
- These leaks included the Collateral Murder video (April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), and CableGate (November 2010)
- Following the 2010 leaks, the federal government of the United States launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks
- And asked allied nations for assistance
- In November 2010, Sweden issued an international arrest warrant for Assange
- He had been questioned there months earlier over allegations of sexual assault and rape
- Assange denied the allegations
- And said that he would be extradited from Sweden to the United States because of his role in publishing secret American documents
- Assange surrendered to UK police on 7 December 2010
- But was released on bail within 10 days
- Having been unsuccessful in his challenge to the extradition proceedings
- He breached his bail and absconded
- He was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012
- And remained in the Embassy of Ecuador in London until his arrest in April 2019
- Assange has held Ecuadorian citizenship since 12 December 2017
- During the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries, WikiLeaks hosted emails sent or received by candidate Hillary Clinton from her private email server when she was Secretary of State
- After the Democratic Party, along with cybersecurity experts, claimed that Russian intelligence had hacked Clinton campaign-related e-mails and leaked them to WikiLeaks
- Assange said Clinton was causing “hysteria about Russia”
- He consistently denied any connection to or cooperation with Russia in relation to the leaks
- Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation into the rape accusation against Assange
- And applied to revoke the European arrest warrant on 19 May 2017
- The London Metropolitan Police indicated that an arrest warrant was in force for Assange’s failure to surrender himself to his bail
- Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno said on 27 July 2018 that he had begun talks with British authorities to withdraw the asylum for Assange
- In December, Assange turned down an offer that would have allowed him to leave the embassy
- With the guarantee that the UK would not extradite him to any country where he could face the death penalty
- His birht parents are Christine Ann Hawkins, a visual artist
- And John Shipton, an anti-war activist and builder
- The couple separated prior to his birth
- When Julian Hawkins was a year old, his mother married Richard Brett Assange, an actor
- With whom she ran a small theatre company and whom Assange regards as his father
- The surname Assange is an Anglicisation of the Chinese name Au Sang
- From a Taiwanese man who married a Torres Strait Islander woman on Thursday Island
- His mother had a house in Nelly Bay on Magnetic Island
- There they lived from time to time until it was destroyed by fire
- Christine and Brett Assange divorced about 1979
- Christine Assange then became involved with Leif Meynell
- Also known as Leif Hamilton
- A member of Australian cult The Famil
- With whom she had a son before the couple broke up in 1982
- Assange had a nomadic childhood
- And had lived in over thirty Australian towns by the time he reached his mid-teens
- Then he settled with his mother and half-brother in Melbourne, Victoria
- He attended many schools
- Including Goolmangar Primary School in New South Wales (1979-1983) and Townsville State High School
- As well as being schooled at home
- He studied programming, mathematics, and physics at Central Queensland University (1994)
- And the University of Melbourne (2003- 2006)
- But did not complete a degree
- While in his teens, Assange married a woman named Teresa
- And in 1989 they had a son, Daniel Assange
- Now he is a software designer
- The couple separated and initially disputed custody of their child
- Assange was Daniel’s primary caregiver for much of his childhood
- Assange has other children
- In an open letter to French President François Hollande, he stated that his youngest child lives in France with his mother
- He also said that his family had faced death threats and harassment because of his work
- Forcing them to change identities and reduce contact with him
- The same day of his arrest, an indictment against Assange from the Grand Jury for the Eastern District of Virginia was unsealed
- He was charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion
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