Profile: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11047811#TWEET152867
Mr Assange's arrest on claims of sexual assault have overshadowed the Wikileaks story
To his fans, Julian Assange is a valiant campaigner for truth. To his critics, he is a publicity-seeker who has endangered lives by putting a mass of sensitive information into the public domain.
Mr Assange is described by those who have worked with him as intense, driven and highly intelligent - with an exceptional ability to crack computer codes.
He set up Wikileaks, which publishes confidential documents and images, in 2006 - making headlines around the world in April 2010, when it released footage showing US soldiers shooting dead 18 civilians from a helicopter in Iraq.
But, later that year, he was detained in the UK after Sweden issued an international arrest warrant over allegations of sexual assault.
Swedish authorities accuse him of raping one woman and sexually molesting and coercing another in August that year, while on a visit to Stockholm to give a lecture. He says both encounters were entirely consensual.
He spent the following months fighting extradition while under house arrest in a small rural town in England. In late May 2012, however, Britain's Supreme Court ruled that he should be extradited to Sweden to face the charges.
Mr Assange had indicated that he would challenge such a ruling at the European Court of Human Rights.
Julian Assange has been reluctant to talk about his background, but media interest since the emergence of Wikileaks has given some insight into his influences.
He was born in Townsville, Queensland, northern Australia, in 1971, and led a nomadic childhood while his parents ran a touring theatre.
He became a father at 18, and custody battles soon followed.
Caught hacking The development of the internet gave him a chance to use his early promise at maths, though this, too, led to difficulties.
In 1995 he was accused with a friend of dozens of hacking activities.
Though the group of hackers was skilled enough to track detectives tracking them, Mr Assange was eventually caught and pleaded guilty.
He was fined several thousand Australian dollars - only escaping a prison term on the condition that he did not reoffend.
He then spent three years working with an academic, Suelette Dreyfus, who was researching the emerging, subversive side of the internet, writing a book with her, Underground, that became a bestseller in the computing fraternity.
Ms Dreyfus described Mr Assange as a "very skilled researcher" who was "quite interested in the concept of ethics, concepts of justice, what governments should and shouldn't do".
This was followed by a course in physics and maths at Melbourne University, where he became a prominent member of a mathematics society, inventing an elaborate maths puzzle that contemporaries said he excelled at.
'Charisma' He began Wikileaks in 2006 with a group of like-minded people from across the web, creating a web-based "dead-letterbox" for would-be leakers.
“Start Quote
"[To] keep our sources safe, we have had to spread assets, encrypt everything, and move telecommunications and people around the world to activate protective laws in different national jurisdictions," Mr Assange told the BBC in 2011.
"We've become good at it, and never lost a case, or a source, but we can't expect everyone to go through the extraordinary efforts that we do."
He adopted a nomadic lifestyle, running Wikileaks from temporary, shifting locations.
He can go long stretches without eating, and focus on work with very little sleep, according to Raffi Khatchadourian, a reporter for the New Yorker magazine who spent several weeks travelling with him.
"He creates this atmosphere around him where the people who are close to him want to care for him to help keep him going.
"I would say that probably has something to do with his charisma."
Daniel Schmitt, a co-founder, describes Mr Assange as "one of the few people who really care about positive reform in this world to a level where you're willing to do something radical to risk making a mistake, just for the sake of working on something they believe in".
Mr Assange came to prominence with the release of the footage of the US helicopter shooting civilians in Iraq. He promoted and defended the video, as well as the massive releases of classified US military documents on the Afghan and Iraq wars, in July and October 2010.
The website has gone on to release new tranches of documents, including most recently five million confidential emails from US-based intelligence company Stratfor.
But it also says it is fighting for its own survival, faced with an "unlawful financial blockade" led by Western financial companies.
Bitter battle Coverage of Mr Assange remains dominated by Sweden's efforts to extradite him over the sexual charges.
He has said that they are politically motivated, part of a smear campaign against him and his whistle-blowing website.
He recently made a submission to the UK's Leveson inquiry into press standards, saying he had faced "widespread inaccurate and negative media coverage".
An initial investigation in August 2010 was dropped after only a day, but the following month Sweden's director of prosecution reopened the case.
Mr Assange has been fighting a bitter legal battle ever since his arrest in London in December 2010. He spent eight nights in prison before being released that same month and has since been under house arrest without charge, as the guest of wealthy supporters.
At an appeal hearing in November 2011, two judges at the High Court upheld the decision to extradite Mr Assange to Sweden over the sex crimes allegations.
The following month he won the right to petition the Supreme Court directly in his fight against extradition after judges ruled that his case raised "a question of general public importance".
In May 2012, the Supreme Court judges, in a majority decision, ruled against Mr Assange's lawyers and dismissed his challenge that the the Swedish prosecutor who had asked for extradition was not a valid judicial authority.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11047811#TWEET152867
To his fans, Julian Assange is a valiant campaigner for truth. To his critics, he is a publicity-seeker who has endangered lives by putting a mass of sensitive information into the public domain.
Mr Assange is described by those who have worked with him as intense, driven and highly intelligent - with an exceptional ability to crack computer codes.
He set up Wikileaks, which publishes confidential documents and images, in 2006 - making headlines around the world in April 2010, when it released footage showing US soldiers shooting dead 18 civilians from a helicopter in Iraq.
But, later that year, he was detained in the UK after Sweden issued an international arrest warrant over allegations of sexual assault.
Swedish authorities accuse him of raping one woman and sexually molesting and coercing another in August that year, while on a visit to Stockholm to give a lecture. He says both encounters were entirely consensual.
He spent the following months fighting extradition while under house arrest in a small rural town in England. In late May 2012, however, Britain's Supreme Court ruled that he should be extradited to Sweden to face the charges.
Mr Assange had indicated that he would challenge such a ruling at the European Court of Human Rights.
Julian Assange has been reluctant to talk about his background, but media interest since the emergence of Wikileaks has given some insight into his influences.
He was born in Townsville, Queensland, northern Australia, in 1971, and led a nomadic childhood while his parents ran a touring theatre.
He became a father at 18, and custody battles soon followed.
Caught hacking The development of the internet gave him a chance to use his early promise at maths, though this, too, led to difficulties.
In 1995 he was accused with a friend of dozens of hacking activities.
Though the group of hackers was skilled enough to track detectives tracking them, Mr Assange was eventually caught and pleaded guilty.
He was fined several thousand Australian dollars - only escaping a prison term on the condition that he did not reoffend.
He then spent three years working with an academic, Suelette Dreyfus, who was researching the emerging, subversive side of the internet, writing a book with her, Underground, that became a bestseller in the computing fraternity.
Ms Dreyfus described Mr Assange as a "very skilled researcher" who was "quite interested in the concept of ethics, concepts of justice, what governments should and shouldn't do".
This was followed by a course in physics and maths at Melbourne University, where he became a prominent member of a mathematics society, inventing an elaborate maths puzzle that contemporaries said he excelled at.
'Charisma' He began Wikileaks in 2006 with a group of like-minded people from across the web, creating a web-based "dead-letterbox" for would-be leakers.
“Start Quote
He creates this atmosphere around him where the people who are close to him want to care for him to help keep him going”
End Quote Raffi Khatchadourian Reporter, New Yorker magazine
"[To] keep our sources safe, we have had to spread assets, encrypt everything, and move telecommunications and people around the world to activate protective laws in different national jurisdictions," Mr Assange told the BBC in 2011.
"We've become good at it, and never lost a case, or a source, but we can't expect everyone to go through the extraordinary efforts that we do."
He adopted a nomadic lifestyle, running Wikileaks from temporary, shifting locations.
He can go long stretches without eating, and focus on work with very little sleep, according to Raffi Khatchadourian, a reporter for the New Yorker magazine who spent several weeks travelling with him.
"He creates this atmosphere around him where the people who are close to him want to care for him to help keep him going.
"I would say that probably has something to do with his charisma."
Daniel Schmitt, a co-founder, describes Mr Assange as "one of the few people who really care about positive reform in this world to a level where you're willing to do something radical to risk making a mistake, just for the sake of working on something they believe in".
Mr Assange came to prominence with the release of the footage of the US helicopter shooting civilians in Iraq. He promoted and defended the video, as well as the massive releases of classified US military documents on the Afghan and Iraq wars, in July and October 2010.
The website has gone on to release new tranches of documents, including most recently five million confidential emails from US-based intelligence company Stratfor.
But it also says it is fighting for its own survival, faced with an "unlawful financial blockade" led by Western financial companies.
Bitter battle Coverage of Mr Assange remains dominated by Sweden's efforts to extradite him over the sexual charges.
He has said that they are politically motivated, part of a smear campaign against him and his whistle-blowing website.
He recently made a submission to the UK's Leveson inquiry into press standards, saying he had faced "widespread inaccurate and negative media coverage".
An initial investigation in August 2010 was dropped after only a day, but the following month Sweden's director of prosecution reopened the case.
Mr Assange has been fighting a bitter legal battle ever since his arrest in London in December 2010. He spent eight nights in prison before being released that same month and has since been under house arrest without charge, as the guest of wealthy supporters.
At an appeal hearing in November 2011, two judges at the High Court upheld the decision to extradite Mr Assange to Sweden over the sex crimes allegations.
The following month he won the right to petition the Supreme Court directly in his fight against extradition after judges ruled that his case raised "a question of general public importance".
In May 2012, the Supreme Court judges, in a majority decision, ruled against Mr Assange's lawyers and dismissed his challenge that the the Swedish prosecutor who had asked for extradition was not a valid judicial authority.
