He faces 175 years in prison. Prosecuted for having published, from 2010, hundreds of thousands of confidential documents relating to American military and diplomatic activities, Julian Assange, controversial whistleblower now aged 52, could be extradited to the United States . Unless British justice rules in favor of its final appeal, studied on Tuesday February 20.

Detained since April 2019 in the high security Belmarsh prison, in east London, after having remained a refugee in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years, he is described by his relatives as very physically diminished by these 12 years of confinement. Worried, his defense even warns of a risk of suicide if he is handed over to the American authorities.

However, it all began far from the tumults of power. The future hacker was born in 1971 in Townsville, a city on the northeast coast of Australia. His parents separated shortly after his birth. His mother Christine was then a bohemian artist. When he was two years old, she married a traveling theater director, Brett Assange, who then recognized Julian. As MacLean magazine reports, the young boy's classmates describe an "atypical" family: "It was very interesting to go to their house, there was always something happening."

Julian is in fact tossed around by the representations of his mother, but also by her love stories. In 1979, she remarried a musician, member of a sect, described by Assange as a “manipulative and violent psychopath”. To escape him, Julian and his mother move regularly. The young boy thus attended more than thirty schools during his childhood. “Sometimes Assange went to school, other times he didn't. But he was still educated in a whole bunch of fields and he had a passion for computers,” describes MacLean magazine.

Young pirate

The child of artists plunged very quickly into the world of computing. Which also led to his first run-ins with the law. At 16, he joined the hacker community under the nickname Mendax. He was then part of a trio called "International Subversives" which enjoyed infiltrating computers all over the world. From NASA to the Pentagon, everything goes, but these hackers have a credo: neither do damage nor take advantage of the information they obtain.

However, they are spotted when they target the telephone company Nortel. Julian Assange, who had just turned 20, and his comrades were arrested in May 1991. He was ultimately fined $2,300, but the damage was done. He becomes paranoid and fears another arrest.

At the same time, he faces marital problems. His wife fled with their infant son, Daniel. It was then that he began a long legal battle to regain custody. He is once again psychologically shaken. In an interview with the New Yorker, his mother Christine explains that his hair then turned white due to "post-traumatic stress" and that he developed a fierce hatred of government institutions.

A global personality with conspiratorial overtones

However, Julian Assange has not forgotten his first passion, computing. In 1999, he launched a website which later became WikiLeaks. But it was only in 2010 that he became known to the general public with the publication of more than 700,000 confidential American documents. Its goal: “to free the press” and “to unmask state secrets and abuses”.

Those who worked with Assange evoke his acute relationship with conspiracyism, which he thought about even before the creation of WikiLeaks. He even devoted two essays to this subject in 2006, “State and Terrorist Conspiracies” and “Conspiracy as Governance”. He explains in particular how the people can be manipulated, and how they can fight with the internet against the conspiracies of the powerful.

A bit paranoid, according to several people who worked with him, he is notably described by Bill Keller, editorial director of the New York Times – with whom he fell out – as “obsessed with conspiracy theories”.

If the name of Julien Assange is synonymous with the defense of freedom of information, the American authorities treat him as a pariah. In 2012, the judicial machine got underway. To escape extradition to Sweden, where he was accused of rape, he ended up taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The aim is to avoid possible extradition to the United States, where he then faces the death penalty due to the publication of secret American documents. Ecuador, then chaired by the great figure of the South American left Rafael Correa, responded favorably and granted him asylum.

Julian Assange has always denied these rape accusations, saying he is the victim of a conspiracy and suggesting that his accusers work for the United States. He will have to wait until 2019 before the charges are definitively dropped.

At the Ecuadorian embassy, ​​recluse and dad

The WikiLeaks founder lived in seclusion inside the embassy for seven years. It consists of a semblance of home in an 18 square meter room including a bed, a shower, a computer and a microwave. This does not prevent him from receiving his many admirers: from footballer Éric Cantona to pro-Brexit British politician Nigel Farage, including singer Lady Gaga and even actress Pamela Anderson, “who brings him vegan sandwiches”.

Above all, in 2011 he met a new lawyer, Stella Morris, hired to join the legal team responsible for fighting his extradition. The one who later became his wife gave him two little boys, both born while their father lived in isolation.

Stella Morris, the wife of Julian Assange alongside their two sons Max and Gabriel, on March 23, 2022 on the occasion of their wedding. © Dylan Martinez, AP

In 2016, while its founder is still stuck between four walls, the WikiLeaks adventure continues. The site sparked a new storm, in the middle of the presidential campaign in the United States, by publishing thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic camp and quickly became embarrassing for candidate Hillary Clinton. American intelligence services have since established that the emails were hacked by Russian hackers as part of a campaign by Moscow to influence the American election.

Icon for some, “high-tech terrorist” for others

These revelations have somewhat tarnished the image of the activist Assange. Already in 2011, the five newspapers associated with WikiLeaks (including The New York Times, The Guardian and Le Monde) had condemned the platform's method, which made public unredacted telegrams from the American State Department. They considered that the documents were likely to “put certain sources at risk”. The criticism was also made by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Since then, only a hard core made up of a few celebrities, such as the American actor Martin Sheen and the actress Pamela Anderson, has remained loyal to him. In France, upon the announcement of his arrest, several politicians gave him their support and asked that France grant him protection, like Jean-Luc Mélenchon, François Asselineau and Florian Philippot.

Support from Jean-Luc Mélenchon

The traitor @Lenin Moreno now doubles as the stooge of the USA. After attacking @MashiRafael, he now hands Julian #Assange to the police.#WikiLeaks

  Jean-Luc Mélenchon (@JLMelenchon) April 11, 2019

On February 19, 2024, Julian Assange won the Anticor ethics prize, the French anti-corruption association saluting “a freedom fighter”. "He fought for us, for our right to know. He fought against reason of state. He fought to establish an intelligence system in the service of the truth and the citizens."

But if some see him as an icon, a sort of “Robin Hood” on the side of the people, others consider him as a threat, even an agent in the service of foreign powers, like American Vice-President Joe Biden who, ten years before his election to the presidency of the United States, described him as a “high-tech terrorist”. “According to the North American vice-president, the truth about the United States is terrorism,” Julian Assange retorted.

In the camp of his detractors, it has been a question for years of shattering his image of "cyber warrior". In April 2019, Theresa May, then British Prime Minister, insisted that “no one is above the law”. For his head of diplomacy, Jeremy Hunt, Julian Assange “flew the truth for years” and he “is not a hero”.

“No one is above the law”, according to the head of British diplomacy Jeremy Hunt

Julian Assange is no hero and no one is above the law. He has hidden from the truth for years. Thank you Ecuador and President @Lenin Moreno for your cooperation with @foreignoffice to ensure Assange faces justice

  Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) April 11, 2019

At the end of 2022, while British judges have just formally authorized his extradition to the United States, the five newspapers associated with WikiLeaks which had previously condemned the platform's methods are finally calling on the American government to drop the prosecution against Julian Assange, because “publishing is not a crime”.

If the High Court in London were to reject his appeal, Julian Assange could only turn to the European Court of Human Rights to avoid ending his days in an American prison.

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