The “number one enemy” of USA for some and a legend for others, Julian Assangehas been put in freedom after reaching an agreement with American justice, which in principle puts an end to a long legal battle and allows him to return to his native Australia.
It was the portal that he himself founded, WikiLeaksthe person in charge of announcing this Tuesday on his X account that Assange He was leaving the British high-security prison where he had been held for five years, leaving United Kingdom with the aim of returning to their country.
The release had been possible after Assange52 years old, reached an agreement with the US Department of Justice which puts an end to a long judicial saga due to the leak of classified documents, and which will completely conclude once he appears on Wednesday in a court in the Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific, and then heads to Australia.
Hero or villain?
Hero or villain, the journey of Assange, who went from hacker to fighter against the powers that be, is part of the universal battle for freedom of expression for journalistic and human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International.
Despite not having been convicted of any crime, the Australian has spent almost fourteen years in captivity in the United Kingdomthe last five years in London’s Belmarsh high-security prison.
Initially detained in 2010 at the request of Sweden for a case now closed, Assange He was a refugee in the Ecuadorian embassy in London from June 19, 2012 until his expulsion and arrest in April 2019 at the request of USAwhich instigated the current process.
During his stay at the diplomatic mission he met the Spanish-Swedish Sara González Devant, part of his legal team and who changed her name to Stella, with whom he had two children in 2017 (Gabriel) and 2019 (Max), whose existence she revealed. in 2020 by starting a public campaign for his release.
Great and unpredictable
Born in Townsville (Australia) on July 3, 1971, the figure of Assange, With a pale complexion and characteristic white hair, he is a mystery even to his collaborators, who describe him as charismatic and intelligent but unpredictable.
The computer programmer, who was said to spend hours at work without washing, eating or sleeping, had a nomadic childhood in Australiawhere his mother, the artist Christine Ann, constantly changed residences, escaping from the father of her younger brother, of whom she claimed custody.
In his youth he was prosecuted in that country for computer crimes for accessing, with his group International Subversives, protected systems of official organizations, but he was successful with a mere fine when the judge assessed that his activities responded to curiosity and not criminal purposes. .
Still a teenager, he married a woman with whom in 1989 he had a son, Daniel Assange, now a software designer.
In the mid-nineties, Assange He worked as a free software programmer on encryption programs for Linux and collaborated on the book ‘Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier’, by Suelette Dreyfuss (1997), where he explained his philosophy of not damaging the computer systems to which he accessed.
After studying mathematics and physics at the University of Melbourne (although he did not graduate), in 2006 he co-founded WikiLeaks with the mission of exposing government information that, in their opinion, should be available to citizens.
The video of the controversy
It came to light when in April 2010 WikiLeaks released a controversial video, leaked by former US soldier Chelsea Manning, in which US troops shot civilians in Iraq in 2007, as well as other alleged atrocities in Afghanistan and 250,000 diplomatic cables that embarrassed world leaders.
These revelations were considered crimes of espionage and computer intrusion by USAalthough his defense considered the accusations politically motivated.
Controversial, daring and persevering, Assange He also dedicated himself, among other causes, to assisting Catalan independence supporters in the face of the 2017 referendum, declared illegal by the Spanish Justice.
Within hours of his announced return to Australiaand during a technical stop in Bangkok, WikiLeaks published today in
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