The world of computing and security saw the emergence in the 1990s of a figure as controversial as he was fascinating: Julian Assange, the eccentric founder of the WikiLeaks website. His atypical youth, beginning in the city of Townsville, Australia, and his past as a “famous teenage hacker” traced the path of a life dotted with strange events and actions that shook the United States and its allies .
It was in 2010 that Julian Assange gained global attention when he collaborated with major media outlets to leak war diaries and diplomatic cables revealing the actions of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other places. This revelation provoked fervent reactions among his supporters and deep contempt among his detractors, creating a sharp divide between those who see him as a persecuted hero, defender of government transparency, and those who portray him as a traitor endangering people. American lives.
Julian Assange, 52, grew up attending “37 schools” before the age of 14, according to his claims in a now-deleted blog. His turbulent childhood remains shrouded in mystery, with sometimes conflicting biographical details. Described as the son of traveling puppeteers in a biography published against his wishes in 2011, Assange told The New Yorker in 2010 that his mother’s nomadic lifestyle deprived him of a stable upbringing. At the age of 16, in 1987, he took his first steps in hacking, penetrating networks in North America and Europe with his friends.
In 1991, at age 20, Assange hacked into a terminal in Melbourne on behalf of a Canadian telecommunications company, leading to his arrest by the Australian Federal Police and 31 charges. After pleading guilty to certain charges, he avoided prison, the judge believing that his actions simply stemmed from “intellectual curiosity and the pleasure of being able to navigate through these different computers”.
Although he began studying mathematics and physics at university, Assange did not obtain a degree. In 2006, when he founded WikiLeaks, his jubilation at being able to access locked computer systems for fun transformed into a belief, expressed on his blog, that “only an injustice revealed can be answered; so that ‘an individual acts intelligently, he must know what is really happening.’
In 2010, WikiLeaks explosively released half a million documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Julian Assange saw himself as a science journalist, offering readers the opportunity to verify articles against the original documents behind a story. Among the most notable revelations was a video showing an Apache helicopter attack by US forces in Baghdad in 2007, which resulted in the deaths of 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.
While US prosecutors said documents released by Assange contained the names of Afghans and Iraqis who provided information to US and coalition forces, as well as diplomatic cables exposing journalists, religious leaders, rights activists of man and dissidents in repressive countries, the latter recognized in 2010 that sources revealed by WikiLeaks could suffer harm. Following this warning, Assange promised to work with mainstream media to censor the names of these people. However, WikiLeaks subsequently released 250,000 cables without obscuring the identities mentioned.
A few weeks after this publication, a Swedish prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Julian Assange, following allegations of rape and sexual harassment made by two women. Assange has always denied the accusations, fighting from Britain against his extradition to Sweden for questioning. He views the lawsuits as a smear campaign aimed at moving him to a jurisdiction where he could be extradited to the United States.
Faced with the failure of his appeal against extradition to Sweden, Julian Assange breached his bail in Britain and took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, citing the