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Why Julian Assange Is In Court After Nearly A Decade In Exile

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appeared in court on Monday for the first day of an extradition hearing that could see him sent to the US to face espionage charges.

Assange has been in the UK since 2010. For seven years, he claimed asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy, but he was arrested in April.

Controversially, he remains in custody. This is why.

Who is Julian Assange, and what is WikiLeaks?

Assange, 48, from Townsville, Australia, founded the website WikiLeaks in 2006.

The organisation describes itself as “a multi-national media organi[s]ation and associated library” which “specialises in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption”.

It is stated on the website that WikiLeaks has published more than 10m documents and associated analysis – the best known being the trove of documents published in 2010 that consisted of confidential documents from the US military.

Assange is accused of working with the former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to leak the documents.

The leak made headlines worldwide when it revealed footage that showed US soldiers shooting 18 civilians dead from a helicopter in Iraq.

Prior to WikiLeaks, Assange and a friend had been accused of hacking activities as long ago as 1995 – for which he was fined several thousand Australian dollars and managed to avoid a prison term on the condition that he did not reoffend.

He went on to work as a researcher, mostly into the subversive elements of the early internet, and undertook a course in physics and maths at Melbourne University.

Why is he in prison now?

In the simplest terms, Assange is currently being held on remand – that is, awaiting trial – in Belmarsh prison, where he has been since September 2019.

But he was in fact already in jail, having just finished a 50-week sentence for breaching bail conditions by claiming refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Assange was first...

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