Frequently Asked Questions about the Julian Assange Charges

"After spending nearly seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Julian Assange was arrested by British police, was convicted for violating the terms of his bail in the U.K., and had an indictment against him unsealed in the United States—all in a single day. Despite the swiftness of the recent action, the charges against Assange raise a host of complex questions that are unlikely to be resolved in the near future. This Sidebar examines the international and domestic legal issues implicated in the criminal cases against Assange.

Background on Julian Assange
An Australian national, Julian Assange is the founder of the Wikileaks website, which states that it “specializes in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials.” In one of its many mass disclosures, in 2010, Wikileaks published a cache of hundreds of thousands of State Department cables, Guantanamo Bay detainee assessments, and U.S. military reports related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. While the United States did not publicly pursue criminal charges against Assange for the disclosure at the time as it did with Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, Assange did not avoid legal entanglements. In 2010, a Swedish prosecutor issued a European arrest warrant for Assange in connection with rape and sexual misconduct allegations unrelated to Wikileaks.

Assange, who was living in the U.K. at the time, denied the charges, but turned himself into the British police in response to the warrant. A U.K. court later released him on bail while the courts considered whether he should be extradited to Sweden. After the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom rejected Assange’s objections to extradition, Assange breached his bail conditions and entered the embassy of Ecuador in London in June 2012—where he remained until his arrest on April 11, 2019..."
Julian Assange