Julian Assange was born on July 3, 1971, in Townsville, Queensland, Australia. When he was a year old, his mother married Brett Assange, who adopted him, giving Julian his surname.
In 1995, Assange and a friend were accused of dozens of hacking activities. Despite being skilled enough to track the detectives tracking them, Assange was eventually caught, pleaded guilty, and was fined several thousand Australian dollars, narrowly avoiding prison.
Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006, creating a platform for the publication of confidential documents and images. The site gained global prominence with the release of a video in April 2010 showing a US military helicopter firing on and killing Iraqi civilians and two journalists.
In 2012, Assange guest-starred as himself on the 500th episode of “The Simpsons.” He recorded his lines over the phone from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he was granted asylum for nearly seven years.
WikiLeaks has been responsible for several significant leaks, including more than 90,000 classified documents related to the Afghanistan war and 250,000 US diplomatic cables, significantly impacting global politics and journalism.
After being accused of sexual assault in Sweden in 2010, Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in June 2012 to avoid extradition.
He remained there until April 2019 when he was arrested by British police after Ecuador withdrew his asylum status.
Assange married Stella Moris in March 2022, while he was in Belmarsh Prison. The couple has two sons, Max and Gabriel, who were conceived while Assange was living in the Ecuadorian Embassy.
In February 2016, a UN rights working group determined that Assange was being arbitrarily detained by the governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom, a ruling that bolstered his claims of political persecution.
Assange co-authored the book “Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet,” published in November 2012. He has been a vocal advocate for transparency, freedom of information, and privacy rights.
Impact on US Elections:
WikiLeaks played a controversial role in the 2016 US presidential election by publishing hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, which fueled major political debate and controversy.
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