Julian Assange: the man behind WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been holed up since 2012 in an embassy in Britain, where aUN panel says hehas been arbitrarily detained.

Assange, anAustralian, is living under diplomatic protectionin the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid arrest by Swedish and U.S. authorities.

Hehas faced death threats over his group's release of secret military and other forms of classified informationand is the focus of U.S. and European investigations into his involvement in WikiLeaks as well as for alleged sexual misconduct.

These are some of the major events in Assange's recent career as head of WikiLeaks, one of the world's best-known whistle-blowing organizations.

Loved and reviled

Assangeisextolled by human rights groups on the one hand and despised by governments and institutions around the world on the other when it comes to his whistle-blowing activities often for the same reason.

• WikiLeaks: The players and key moments

For someone who espouses openness and transparency,Assangeis a private and secretive man. He has acknowledged the use of "four bases" in the years prior to seeking shelter in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, including ones in Iceland, Kenya and Sweden.

Born in July 1971 inTownsvilleon Australia's northeastern coast,Assange'sparents ran a touring theatre company that travelled a lot.

His mother later divorced from Assange's father, and married a man whowas part of a cultthatAssangehas joked about spending time running away from when he was young.

In his youth,Assangereportedly attended 37 schools andsix universities. He studied physics and math at the University of Melbourne, but never completeda degree. In his20sand early30s,hewas a computer programmer of free softwarein Melbourne before startingWikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks,which hefounded in 2006,is known forposting classified government documents, supplied by whistle-blowers, in their entirety. Highlycontroversial ones have included thehundreds of thousands of secret reports on the wars in Iraq, released in October 2010,and on Afghanistan, which drew the CIA's attention to him.

The spotlightveeredback ontoWikiLeaksandAssangein late November 2010, when the website beganposting classified diplomatic cables between the U.S. State Department and its embassiesthat newsoutletsseized on topublish detailsof frank and unflattering assessments of world leaders, as well as candid views of rogue nations and discussions about global crises.

Revelations include that the U.S. ordered its spies to collect DNA, bank account information and other personal information on UN officials, in violation of international law; that attacks on militants in Yemen, which the local governmentavowed wereits own counterinsurgency efforts,were in fact the covert work of the United States; and that Arab leaders have implored the U.S. to confront Iran with military might.

To some,Assangeisa hero for these and other disclosures. He won an Amnesty International Media Award in 2009, was namedbyUtneReaderin December 2010 asone of 25 visionaries changing the world andwas consideredfor Time magazine's 2010 Person of the Year.

In aTedTalkin July 2012,Assangeprovided some insight into his core values."Capable, generous men do not create victims. They nurture victims, and that's something from my father and something from other capable, generous men that have been in my life," he said. "I am a combative person, so I'm not actually so big on the nurturing, but there's another way of nurturing victims, which is to police perpetrators of crimes."

Despite his good intentions, he's stillviewed by some asa dangerous troublemaker, onethat the U.S. government and other countries, including his native Australia,are trying to prosecute.

Former U.S. Republican vice-presidential candidate SarahPalinhas accused President Barack Obama of not doing enough to stopAssangeand wrote in a Facebook posting in November 2010, "Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursueal-Qaedaand Taliban leaders?"

Assangenoted thethreats against him, as well as an Americanblogger's call for his 20-year-old son to be harmed, in anop-ed article aboutWikiLeaksinthenewspaper theAustralian in December 2010."The media helps keep government honest.WikiLeakshas revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption,"Assangewrote.

"People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it."

Assangewent on to address critics alleging that his website has put people's lives risk."WikiLeakshas a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the U.S., with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone."

OnJune 1, 2013,Assangepublished anothercolumn in The New York TimesaboutThe New Digital Age, a book by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen that analyzes the role of technology in transforming global culture, where he criticized Google for becoming a tool of U.S. foreign policy.

While he remains a residentof Ecuador's embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden,Assangecontinues to receive guests and remains active on the world stage.

Extradition battle

The Ecuadorian flap is the latest development in Assange's ongoingbattle against extradition to Sweden.

Swedish authorities issued a European arrest warrant forAssange in December 2010in connection with accusations that he had unwanted, unprotected sex with two female WikiLeaks volunteers during a tripto Stockholmin August 2010.

The 40-year-old Australianand self-described "lightning rod" turned himself in to police in London on Dec. 7, 2010, and was released on bail.

Assangehas argued that he wouldn't get a fair trial in Sweden if he is extradited and that the extradition would violate his human rights. He also fears that in Sweden, he would be in greater danger of being extradited to the U.S., which is considering pursuing charges against Assange over the publication of classified documents.

Helost his initial appeal of the extradition order whena U.K. judge ruled on Feb. 24, 2011, that hecould be extradited.

Following that ruling, Assange hired a new legal team and launched a new appeal.In November 2011, the British High Court rejected Assange's appeal, but in December Britain'sSupreme Courtagreed to hear the caseagainst extradition. Assangeappeared before Britain's Supreme Court on Feb. 1, 2012, to make his final appeal against extradition to Sweden over sex crime allegations.

The Supreme Court ruled in May 2012 that Assange could be sent to Sweden to face the charges. Assangefiled papers on June 13, 2012,asking Britain's Supreme Courttoreopen his extradition case, an unusual legal manoeuvre aimed at blocking his removal to Sweden. The next day, Britain's Supreme Court rejected the move, and on June 19 Assange sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden.

Police in London orderedAssangeto surrender at a police station 10 days later, but he refused. British officials saidAssangewas beyond their reach in the embassy, but add that he would be arrested if he left the embassy for breaching his bail conditions.

On July 2, 2012, the chairwoman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, DianneFeinstein, called forAssangeto be prosecuted for espionage. The U.S. Justice Department also confirmed it is conducting a criminal investigation into theWikileakscase.

Ecuador grantedAssange'srequest for political asylum. The U.K. Foreign Office released a statement Aug. 16, 2012,sayingit was "disappointed" with Ecuador's decision, and added that it was committed to a negotiated solution that would let it "carry out our obligations under the Extradition Act." U.K. officials also threatened to use a 1987 law to lift the Ecuadorian Embassy's diplomatic status.

Sweden called the decision to grant asylum toAssange"unacceptable."

Arrest possible

Assange is living in an apartment inside the embassy, and continues to receive visitors. He announced on Aug. 18, 2014, ata news conference alongside Ecuador's Foreign MinisterRicardoPatinothat heplanned to leave the building "soon."

"I am leaving the embassy soon ... but perhaps not for the reasons thatMurdochpress and Sky news are saying at the moment,"Assangetold reporters at the embassy in central London during the media conference. Media reports prior to the press conferencehad indicated Assange was in poorhealth.

But Britain signaled it would still arrest him if he tried, andAssangestayed put.

In May 2015, Sweden's Supreme courtrejected an appealfromAssangeto revoke a detention order over the allegations of sexual assault.

Assangelaunched a bid to seek asylum in France, but PresidentFrancoisHollanderejected it in July 2015, although he did note thatWikiLeakshadrevealed that the U.S. National Security Agency spied onHollandeand his two predecessors, along withleading French companies.

The following month, Swedish prosecutorsdropped two of the sex crime cases againstAssange, but said they still wanted to question him on accusations of rape made after that visit to Stockholm.

British police had stationed officersoutside the Ecuadorian Embassy in July 2012, but removed them in October 2015. The decisioncame as police said thatbecause there was "no imminent prospect of a diplomatic or legal resolution to this issue," a round-the-clock police presence was "no longer proportionate."

Money woes

Besides Assange's personallegal problems, his organizationwas also been increasingly cut off from sources of financing.

On Oct. 24, 2011, Assange announced that the WikiLeaks site would temporarily stop publishing cablesbecause it had run out of money. He blamed the group's woes on an "unlawful financial blockade" that began in 2010 when Bank of America, MasterCard, VISA, PayPal and Western Union refused to accept donations for the site.

These developmentshighlight an aspect of Assange that's beendebatedever since WikiLeaks jolted the world in July 2010 with its release of 75,000 secret U.S. military documents on the Afghanistan invasion: that the internet activist is as controversial asthe websiteis transparent.

Those documents and the subsequent ones WikiLeaks has released are believed to have been provided to the group by U.S. soldierChelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley.

Manningwas convicted of sending classified documents to WikiLeaks and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

But it has been Assange, not Manning,who has garnered most of the headlines and media spotlight.Even during his house arrest, Assange has continued to do media interviews and make public appearances.

What's next?

If Assange is extradited to Sweden to face the charges of sexual misconduct, there is a risk the United States couldindict Assange and then seekhistransfer fromSweden, with which it has an extraditiontreaty.

Several American commentators and politicians haveurged charges against Assange under the U.S.'s Espionage Act or for possession of stolen government property.

The U.S. government has not revealed whether he has been indicted U.S. grand jury proceedings are secret but has indicated that sensitive investigations into Assange and WikiLeaks have been made.

The UNworking group that declaredon Feb. 6, 2016, that he has been detained arbitrarily saysAssange could face "refoulement" to the United States being handed over to a country where he could face violence or prison. The UN upholds the principle of non-refoulement prohibiting that practice.