Julian Assange, the enigmatic founder of WikiLeaks, rose to prominence in the 1990s as a renowned teenage hacker. His unconventional upbringing, which he referred to as an “itinerant minstrel childhood,” began in Townsville, Australia. However, Assange’s story only grew stranger and more divisive after he shocked the United States and its allies by exposing their secrets on how they conducted their wars.
In 2010, Assange gained global attention for collaborating with prominent news outlets to publish classified war logs and diplomatic cables, revealing instances of misconduct by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other revelations. This work has since sparked intense admiration from his supporters and intense animosity from his critics, leaving little room for neutrality. He is either seen as a persecuted champion of government transparency or a villain who endangered American lives by aiding its adversaries. Consequently, his actions have ignited contentious debates about state secrecy and freedom of the press.
Assange, now 52 years old, had a nomadic upbringing, attending a staggering “37 schools” before the age of 14, as he mentioned in his now-deleted blog. However, the accuracy of these details remains unverifiable, and conflicting accounts and interviews have led to discrepancies in Assange’s biographical information. In a memoir published against his wishes in 2011, after a falling out with his ghostwriter, he was portrayed as the son of traveling puppeteers. In a 2010 interview with The New Yorker, Assange explained that his mother’s transient lifestyle prevented him from receiving a consistent and comprehensive education. Nevertheless, by the time he was 16 years old in 1987, he had acquired his first modem, marking the beginning of his journey as a skilled hacker who, along with his friends, infiltrated networks across North America and Europe.
In 2019, an indictment was unsealed by the U.S. government against Assange, along with additional charges related to WikiLeaks’ release of classified documents. Prosecutors alleged that he collaborated with Chelsea Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, to hack into a Pentagon computer and disclose confidential diplomatic cables and military files pertaining to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Manning had already served seven years of a 35-year military sentence before receiving a commutation from former President Barack Obama.
During that time, Australia’s then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison stated that he had no intentions of intervening in Assange’s case, considering it to be a matter for the United States. Additionally, Swedish prosecutors dropped the rape allegation against Assange due to the passage of too much time.
On Wednesday, Assange’s guilty plea in an American territory in the Pacific resolved the legal case against him in the United States, without him having to spend any time in an American prison.
While detained in London’s Belmarsh Prison as the extradition proceedings progressed through the British courts, his wife informed the BBC on Tuesday that he was in a “terrible state” of health.
Assange tied the knot with his partner, Stella Moris, in jail in 2022. Their relationship began during Assange’s time in the Ecuadorian Embassy. They have two sons, born in 2017 and 2019.
