Europe Features

Julian Assange Profile

Dec 8, 2010, 17:29 GMT

A file photograph showing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange shows an issue of the British daily newspaper The Guardian during a press conference at the Frontline Club in London, Britain, 26 July 2010. EPA/STR

Berlin - Julian Paul Assange started as a computer hacker and went on to engineer the biggest disclosure of secret files after founding WikiLeaks, a group dedicated to 'opening governments.'

Local papers say Assange, born in 1971 in Townsville, north- eastern Australia, grew up in an alternative household, with 'borderline hippies' for parents.

By his own account, his childhood was rather idyllic, 'pretty Tom Sawyer,' involving fishing and rafting.

It was also migratory - according to the daily Courier Mail, by the time he was 14 he had moved 37 times.

The trend continued into his adult life, 'I'm living in airports these days,' Assange told The New Yorker magazine this year.

But it was his lifelong passion for computer hacking which continuously landed him in hot water.

The man later described as having a 'near genius IQ' hacked into the computer systems of the Australian National University and Australian Telecom in 1991, resulting in his first run-in with the law.

In 2006, Assange was among a collective that launched WikiLeaks, a website that enabled anyone to anonymously submit leaked secret documents, which the organisation would then vet.

Initially touted as being founded by Chinese dissidents and others seeking media freedoms, that definition has been removed and replaced with a more general description, including that 'WikiLeaks is a not- for-profit media organisation.'

The group's early efforts were no less rattling than the latest releases of US diplomatic cables and video footage showing US soldiers killing Iraqi civilians and two journalists, though their scale was less global.

Scientologists were appalled in 2008 when WikiLeaks published the Church's secret manuals. The website responded to threats of lawsuits with the release of even more secret documents.

Then the whistleblowing leaks took aim at even more high-profile targets. Documents released included Guantanamo Bay detention centre`s main operations manuals; a revealing report on post-election violence in Kenya; and a secret expose on the looting of state coffers during the regime of former Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi.

The group also took on businesses. One leaked document showed how the largest publicly traded Swiss private-bank, Julius Baer, had avoided paying its taxes.

Companies and governments were already trying to shut down the site before WikiLeaks received what was to become its biggest trove: documents revealing embarrassing truths regarding the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and 250,000 diplomatic cables belonging to Washington's foreign service.

The group quickly moved up in the world, and Assange, with his striking silver hair and soft baritone, became the public face. He told interviewers that it was only once the group was no longer able to hide behind an anonymous collective name that he decided to put himself at the front.

The need for a spokesman became apparent after the group released the Iraq video, with the disturbing banter of soldiers clearly audible as they shot and killed suspected terrorists, who turned out to be reporters.

However, along the way Assange lost many of his early friends and supporters. His alleged authoritarian style, coupled with reported bouts of secrecy and paranoia, alienated many of his followers.

The gaps grew wider after the Afghan war logs went public, and human rights groups became concerned that the exposure of informants' names would lead to retribution.

It was shortly after the war logs were leaked that Assange's personal legal troubles started. Always a man on the move, he found himself in Sweden in August, surrounded by admirers, two of whom would lead to his eventual arrest.

While the details remain sketchy, investigations into what happened reveal two separate cases of one-night-stands. Consensual sex turned into abuse, two women claim, after he did not use condoms.

For all the leaks about the US government - even Sarah Palin's call for him to be hunted down like Osama bin Laden - the arrest of the WikiLeaks' founder in London was legally based solely on the women's allegations.

A report by Britain`s Daily Mail newspaper showed that the women continued to have contact with Assange after the sex encounters took place. It was only some time later, once the one-time admirers met each other, that they jointly filed a complaint to the police.

A warrant from the Swedish prosecutor eventually led to his arrest in Britain, though Assange denies all charges and says he is the victim of a political witch-hunt.