WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a hero or criminal, depending on who you ask.We explain. Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

Prosecutors in Sweden are considering reopening an investigation into sexual assault allegations against Australian WikiLeaks founderJulian Assange, who was arrested inLondons Ecuadorian Embassy after a seven-year standoff and faces an extradition battle to the United States on acharge of conspiring to reveal government secrets.

Sweden's Deputy Chief ProsecutorEva-Marie Perssonsaid in a statement that her office had received a request late Thursday to resume a rape probe intoAssange from lawyers representing the alleged victim. The case was droppedin 2017 because Assange'sresidencyin theEcuadorian Embassy stymied the investigation.

Assange has always denied the rape allegation.

Separate allegations of sexual assault by Assange, made by a second Swedish woman, were discontinuedby authorities in 2015 after the statute of limitations expired.

Julian Assange: WikiLeaks founder had a litany of legal issues before London arrest

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The 47-year-old sought refuge in the embassy in 2012 after hewas released on bail in Britain while facing extradition to Sweden in connection with both sets of allegations.

Ecuador granted him asylum in its embassy because Assange feared if he left the compound he faced a separate risk ofbeing arrestedand extraditedto the U.S. for publishingclassified military and diplomatic cables and images through WikiLeaks, a whistleblowing website he co-founded in 2006. In 2010, WikiLeaksreleased video footage allegedly showingU.S. soldiers killing civilians in Iraq.U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when he was the director of the CIA referred to WikiLeaks as a "non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia."

WikiLeaks published thousands of hacked Democratic Party emails during the 2016 election, although that is not mentioned in Thursday's U.S. indictment.

Julian Assange:WikiLeaks founder, faces US hacking conspiracy charge

Journalist or criminal?:Julian Assangenotorious for leaks of US secrets

Ecuador withdrew its asylum protection for Assange this week and asked British police to arrest him. He is now in custody andfaces a British charge of breaching bail that carries a sentence of up to 12 months in jail if convicted. Assange will face a hearing over possible extradition to the U.S. related to the conspiracy charge on May 2.

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Assanges lawyer Jennifer Robinson said that Assange's arrest wasa "free speech issue" and that anyextradition to the U.S."sets a dangerous precedent for all media organizations and journalists," but critics including U.S. federal prosecutors allegethat Assange was involved in a criminal conspiracy that he stole information when he enlisted the help offormer Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010 to crack a password on a secret computer network within the Defense Department.

Australia's Prime MinisterScott Morrison said Friday that any extradition plans had "nothing to do with Australia"and that Assange would not get any "special treatment"from its consular officials. He said Assange would have to "make his way through whatever comes his way in terms of the justice system"in foreign jurisdictions.

However, Australia's Foreign Minister Marise Payne told reporters,respondingto fears from Assanges supporters over his possible punishment in the U.S., that Australia was"completely opposed to the death penalty."She said Britain had sought assurances from the U.S. that Assange would not be exposed to the death penalty if he was extradited. The computer hacking charge Assange faces in the U.S. carries up to five years in prison. It wasn't clear if he would face additional U.S. charges.

Julian Assange:WikiLeaks founder, had a litany of legal issues before London arrest

More: Julian Assange had a cat, and the internet is really worried about its fate

"For me, the key is that this isnt about the Espionage Act, or the publication of classified national security information its not a direct threat to the press," Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, wrote on Twitter.

Prime Minister Theresa May told British lawmakers on Thursday that Assange's arrest showed that "no-one is above the law," but Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, said the "extradition of Julian Assange to the U.S. for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government."

Corbyn shared video footage released by WikiLeaks in 2007 that it claimed directly implicated the U.S. military in the killing of civilians and journalists.

Assanges mother Christinetook to Twitter to call for police and prison and court staff to be gentle with her son. She tweeted he had been "8 years detained WITHOUT charge,"and for six years had been "deprived fresh air, exercise, sun,"for three years had been "sick/in pain denied proper medical/dental care"and for one year hed been "isolated/tortured ... Please be patient, gentle & kind to him,"she said.

More: Six big leaks from Julian Assange's WikiLeaks over the years

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Julian Assange: Sweden may reopen rape probe into WikiLeaks ...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was charged Thursday with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for aiding Chelsea Manning in the cracking ofa password to a classified U.S. government computer in 2010, the U.S. Justice Department announced hours after Assange'sarrestin London.

Assange is accused of engaging in a conspiracy with Manning, the former U.S. Army analyst, in breaking a password stored on a U.S. Defense Department computer connected to a U.S. government computer network for classified documents and communications, the Justice Department said. Manning later transmitted a trove of classified government files to Assange, whose website posted the materials to a worldwide audience.Cracking the password allowed Manningto use a different username "rather than her own, officials said.

JULIAN ASSANGE'S ARREST DRAWS FIERCE INTERNATIONAL REACTION

During the conspiracy, Manning and Assange engaged in real-time discussions regarding Mannings transmission of classified records to Assange, the Justice Department said. The discussions also reflect Assange actively encouraging Manning to provide more information. During an exchange, Manning told Assange that after this upload, thats all I really have got left. To which Assange replied, curious eyes never run dry in my experience."

Assange faces a maximum of five years in prison if hes convicted of the charge.

He pleaded innocent to a separate charge of failing to surrender to a Swedish court and skipping bail while in a British courtroom. However, the court found him guilty of breaching his bail conditions

Earlier Thursday,Assange was carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London in the arms ofBritish police, who arrested him ina dramatic scene that endedAssange's nearly7-year stay at the embassy -- and left the world watching to see if the anti-secrecy site would retaliate.

Moments before the stunning arrest,Ecuador announced it had withdrawn Assange's asylum for repeatedly violating international conventions and protocol.

Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno described the decision to withdraw Assanges asylum as a sovereign decision because of his alleged repeated violations.

Today I announce that the discourteous and aggressive behavior of Mr. Julian Assange, the hostile and threatening declarations of its allied organization, against Ecuador, and especially the transgression of international treaties, have led the situation to a point where the asylum of Mr. Assange is unsustainable and no longer viable, Moreno said in a video statement posted on Twitter.

Video of Assanges arrest showed him with a full white beard, holding an unidentified magazineand yelling something to reporters, thoughit was unclear what he said.

Ecuadoran Foreign Minister Jose Valencia told Teleamazonas this week that living in the embassy indefinitely is bad for Assanges "state of mind, his health, but that Assange has a right to a fair trial and right to a defense.

London's Metropolitan Police vowed earlier this month to arrest the 47-year-old Australian native if he left the embassy. Assange faces possible extradition to the U.S. for publishing thousands of classified military and diplomatic cables through WikiLeaks.

FILE - In this Friday, Feb. 5, 2016 file photo, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stands on the balcony of the Ecuadorean Embassy to address waiting supporters and media in London. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)

Assange has been in the embassy since 2012 when British courts ordered him extradited to face questioning in a sexual assault case. That matter has since been dropped, but Wikileaks is facing a federal grand jury investigation over its publication of American diplomatic and military secrets during the Iraq War.

WIKILEAKS' JULIAN ASSANGE AT ECUADORIAN EMBASSY IN LONDON TARGET OF 'EXTENSIVE' SPYING OPERATION: GROUP

British police made the announcement of Assanges arrest moments after Ecuador decided to withdraw asylum. Jennifer Robinson, Assanges attorney, said in a tweet Assange was arrested on an extradition request from the U.S. as well as on charges of breaching his bail conditions.

Assange has been arrested not just for breach of bail conditions but also in relation to a US extradition request, Robinson tweeted.

Barry J. Pollack, another attorney for Assange, called his clients arrest at the embassy disappointing.

It is bitterly disappointing that a country would allow someone to whom it has extended citizenship and asylum to be arrested in its embassy. First and foremost, we hope that the UK will now give Mr. Assange access to proper health care, which he has been denied for seven years, the statement said.

Once his health care needs have been addressed, the UK courts will need to resolve what appears to be an unprecedented effort by the United States seeking to extradite a foreign journalist to face criminal charges for publishing truthful information.

The U.S. Justice Department revealed the existence of a sealed criminal case against Assange in a court filing last year. It wasnt clear what he was accused of.

We are aware of the reports that Julian Assange was taken into custody by United Kingdom authorities, Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi said.

The arrest drew fierce reaction from people around the world, including WikiLeaks, UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Edward Snowden and even Pamela Anderson.

WikiLeaks in a tweet accused Ecuador of illegally terminating Assanges political asylum and accused the country of violating international law.

This man is a son, a father, a brother. He has won dozens of journalism awards. He's been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year since 2010. Powerful actors, including CIA, are engaged in a sophisticated effort to dehumanize, delegitimize and imprison him, WikiLeaks wrote.

Snowden, who infamously leaked highly classified NSA information, tweeted Assange's arrest would "going to end upin the history books.

He later tweeted he was shocked about the "weakness" over the U.S. charge.

Anderson, who previously described her romantic relationship with Assange to Fox News last year, blasted Britain and the U.S. in a series of tweets.

I am in shock, Anderson wrote. I couldnt hear clearly what he said? He looks very bad. How could you [Ecuador]? (Because he exposed you).How could you UK. ? Of course - you are Americas b---h and you need a diversion from your idiotic Brexit b------t.

PAMELA ANDERSON BLASTS BRITAIN, US AFTER JULIAN ASSANGE ARREST: 'HOW COULD YOU U.K.?'

She added: And the USA? This toxic coward of a President. He needs to rally his base? - You are selfish and cruel. You have taken the entire world backwards. You are devils and liars and thieves. And you will ROTT And WE WILL RISE.

Hunt thanked the Ecuadorean government for cooperating with the arrest.

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

British Prime Minister Theresa May followed Hunt's statement, saying that Assange's arrest proves that "no one is above the law."

Assange had previously held an interview with Fox News Sean Hannity ahead of Trumps inauguration in 2017.

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He argued that the Obama administration was pushing the narrative of Russia meddling in the U.S. election to delegitimize then-President-elect Donald Trump. He also claimed he wasnt the source for the hacked emails he released from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrested after Ecuador ...

If Mr. Assange is convicted on the conspiracy to hack offense alone, he could face up to five years in prison. The government could later seek to charge him with additional offenses, but because of extradition practices, any such superseding indictment would most likely need to come soon, before Britain formally decides whether to transfer custody of him.

Until recently, Mr. Assanges Ecuadorean citizenship, granted in 2017, presented a hurdle in President Lenn Morenos efforts to remove him from the embassy. Ecuadors Constitution limits the governments ability to turn over citizens to a foreign justice system, especially if they could face torture or the death penalty, which are outlawed in Ecuador.

The countrys former foreign minister, Mara Fernanda Espinosa, originally granted Mr. Assanges citizenship, citing a policy that allowed certain foreigners under international protection to be naturalized. She argued that Mr. Assanges refuge at the embassy was a case that qualified.

However, on Thursday, Ecuadors current foreign minister, Jos Valencia, said Mr. Assanges citizenship had been suspended because of irregularities, opening the door for him to be handed to the British authorities.

Mr. Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced questions about sexual assault accusations, which he has denied. Sweden rescinded its arrest warrant for Mr. Assange in 2017, but he refused to leave the embassy.

Under a previous president, Ecuador had offered Mr. Assange citizenship and open-ended refuge in its embassy. But its government soured on the relationship as the years kept passing, and it eventually began to impose limits on what Mr. Assange could say and do.

The Ecuadorean government said last year that it had cut off Mr. Assanges internet access, saying that he had violated an agreement to stop commenting on, or trying to influence, the politics of other countries. The government also imposed other restrictions, like limiting his visitors. He sued in October, claiming that it was violating his rights.

On Thursday, Mr. Moreno, who became Ecuadors president in 2017, said on Twitter that his country had decided to stop sheltering Mr. Assange after his repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols.

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Julian Assange Arrested in London as U.S. Unseals Hacking ...

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Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange has been arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Assange took refuge in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault case that has since been dropped.

At Westminster Magistrates' Court on Thursday he was found guilty of failing to surrender to the court.

He now faces US federal conspiracy charges related to one of the largest ever leaks of government secrets.

The UK will decide whether to extradite Assange, in response to allegations by the Department for Justice that he conspired with former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to download classified databases.

He faces up to five years in US prison if convicted on the charges of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.

Assange's lawyer Jennifer Robinson said they would be fighting the extradition request. She said it set a "dangerous precedent" where any journalist could face US charges for "publishing truthful information about the United States".

She said she had visited Assange in the police cells where he thanked supporters and said: "I told you so."

Assange had predicted that he would face extradition to the US if he left the embassy.

After his arrest, the 47-year-old Australian national was initially taken to a central London police station before appearing in court.

Dressed in a black suit and black polo shirt, he waved to the public gallery and gave a thumbs up. He pleaded not guilty to the 2012 charge of failing to surrender to the court.

Finding him guilty of that charge, District Judge Michael Snow said Assange's behaviour was "the behaviour of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest".

He sent him to Southwark Crown Court for sentencing, where he faces up to 12 months in prison.

The court also heard that during his arrest at the embassy he had to be restrained and shouted: "This is unlawful, I am not leaving."

Assange set up Wikileaks in 2006 with the aim of obtaining and publishing confidential documents and images.

The organisation hit the headlines four years later when it released footage of US soldiers killing civilians from a helicopter in Iraq.

Former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was arrested in 2010 for disclosing more than 700,000 confidential documents, videos and diplomatic cables to the anti-secrecy website.

She said she only did so to spark debates about foreign policy, but US officials said the leak put lives at risk.

She was found guilty by a court martial in 2013 of charges including espionage. However, her jail sentence was later commuted.

Manning was recently jailed for refusing to testify before an investigation into Wikileaks' role in revealing the secret files.

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The indictment against Assange, issued last year in the state of Virginia, alleges that he conspired in 2010 with Manning to access classified information on Department of Defense computers. He faces up to five years in jail.

Manning downloaded four databases from US departments and agencies between January and May 2010, the indictment says. This information, much of which was classified, was provided to Wikileaks.

The US Justice Department described it as "one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States".

Cracking a password stored on the computers, the indictment alleges, would have allowed Manning to log on to them in such a way as to make it harder for investigators to determine the source of the disclosures. It is unclear whether the password was actually broken.

Correspondents say the narrowness of the charge seems intended to avoid falling foul of the US Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press.

The Wikileaks co-founder had been in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012, after seeking asylum there to avoid extradition to Sweden on a rape allegation.

The investigation into the alleged rape, which he denied, was later dropped because he had evaded the arrest warrant. The Swedish Prosecution Authority has said it is now considering whether to resume the inquiry before the statute of limitations runs out in August 2020.

Scotland Yard said it was invited into the embassy on Thursday by the ambassador, following the Ecuadorian government's withdrawal of asylum.

Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno said the country had "reached its limit on the behaviour of Mr Assange".

Mr Moreno said: "The most recent incident occurred in January 2019, when Wikileaks leaked Vatican documents.

"This and other publications have confirmed the world's suspicion that Mr Assange is still linked to WikiLeaks and therefore involved in interfering in internal affairs of other states."

His accusations against Assange also included blocking security cameras at the embassy, accessing security files and confronting guards.

Mr Moreno said the British government had confirmed in writing that Assange "would not be extradited to a country where he could face torture or the death penalty".

The arrest comes a day after Wikileaks said it had uncovered an extensive spying operation against its co-founder at the Ecuadorian embassy.

There has been a long-running dispute between the Ecuadorian authorities and Assange about what he was and was not allowed to do in the embassy.

BBC diplomatic correspondent James Landale said that over the years they had removed his access to the internet and accused him of engaging in political activities - which is not allowed when claiming asylum.

He said: "Precisely what has happened in the embassy is not clear - there has been claim and counter claim."

Prime Minister Theresa May told the House of Commons: "This goes to show that in the UK, no one is above the law."

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the arrest was the result of "years of careful diplomacy" and that it was "not acceptable" for someone to "escape facing justice".

But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that Assange had revealed "evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan" and his extradition "should be opposed by the British government".

Press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders said that the UK should resist extradition, because it would "set a dangerous precedent for journalists, whistleblowers, and other journalistic sources that the US may wish to pursue in the future".

Australia's Foreign Minister Marise Payne said he would continue to receive "the usual consular support" and that consular officers will try to visit him.

And actress Pamela Anderson, who has visited the embassy to support Assange, said the arrest was a "vile injustice".

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Julian Assange: Wikileaks co-founder arrested in London - BBC ...

The spectacle of Julian Assange, bearded and haggard, resisting arrest while London police officers dragged him through the street, punctuated the end of seven confounding years inside the Ecuadorean Embassy, where he lived with his cat in a small corner room as the worlds most famous self-proclaimed political refugee.

Mr. Assange, 47, has long fashioned himself as a crusader for revealing secrets. The internet group he founded, WikiLeaks, published caches of classified American government communications, as well as emails hacked by Russian intelligence clearly intended to damage the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton.

Though arrested Thursday morning by the British for skipping bail, Mr. Assange was immediately charged in the United States for conspiracy to hack a government computer.

To supporters, Mr. Assange was a martyr and champion of free speech. To the United States government, he was a pariah and a lackey of the Kremlin. But it was the hardened opinion of Ecuadors government that perhaps mattered most.

He had become an unwanted houseguest.

At the tiny red-brick embassy, he continued to run his internet group, conducted news conferences before hundreds of fawning admirers from a balcony, rode his skateboard in the halls, and played host to a parade of visitors, including Lady Gaga and Pamela Anderson, a rumored lover who brought vegan sandwiches.

On Thursday, Ms. Anderson sent out a batch of Twitter messages attacking the arrest as a vile injustice and called Britain and the United States devils and liars and thieves.

In interviews with The New York Times in 2016, as part of a long look at his ties to Russia, Mr. Assange denied any link to Russian intelligence, in particular regarding the leaked Democratic emails. Mrs. Clinton and the Democrats were whipping up a neo-McCarthyist hysteria about Russia, he said. There is no concrete evidence that what WikiLeaks publishes comes from intelligence agencies, he said, even as he indicated that he would happily accept such material.

Small as they were, Mr. Assanges living quarters at the embassy, close to the lavish self-indulgence of Harrods, the famous department store, did not cramp his desire to remain in the limelight.

Mr. Assange had an office equipped with a bed, sunlamp, phone, computer, kitchenette, shower, treadmill and bookshelves. Three years ago, one person familiar with the setup called it a gas station with two attendants.

Vaughan Smith, who had been a longtime supporter of Mr. Assange and helped put up his bail money, said that Julians a big bloke, with big bones, and he fills the room physically and intellectually.

Its a tiny embassy with a tiny balcony, he added, small, hot and with not great air flow, and it must be jolly difficult for everyone there.

But from there, Mr. Assange for years held court for admirers and famous curiosity seekers, among them the soccer star Eric Cantona, and Nigel Farage, the pro-Brexit radio host and former head of U.K. Independence Party.

Still, Mr. Assanges isolation was wearing on him, a friend said on Thursday, especially the long, lonely weekends in an essentially empty embassy he could not leave.

Even his friends have described him as difficult, a narcissist with an outsized view of his importance and a disinterest in mundane matters like personal hygiene.

He was becoming deeply depressed and wondered about simply walking out, the friend said, speaking on condition of anonymity. And relations with his hosts were becoming deeply strained, even adversarial.

A copy of a 2014 letter from Juan Falcon Puig, then Ecuadors ambassador to Britain, to the Foreign Ministry, seen by The New York Times, outlined the growing resentment between the diplomats and Mr. Assange over his behavior at the embassy.

Among Mr. Falcons top concerns was Mr. Assanges penchant for riding a skateboard and playing soccer with visitors. His skateboarding, Mr. Falcon said, had damaged floors, walls and doors.

The ambassador said the soccer games had destroyed embassy equipment. When an embassy security agent stopped the game and took away the ball, Mr. Assange began to shake, insult and push the agent, reclaimed the ball and then launched the ball at his body.

The letter said Mr. Assange had invited a television reporter to interview them at the embassy and had showed the visitor off-limits parts of the building.

At one point, according to the letter, Mr. Assange used the alarm setting on a megaphone to attract the police to record them for the show.

This last action, in the middle of the night, was a clear attempt to annoy the police, Mr. Falcon wrote.

Another time, the letter said, Mr. Assange violently hit the embassy control room door demanding in a threatening manner that one of the guards come out to speak to him.

The guards came out, only to be harassed by Mr. Assange, who yelled and shoved them, Mr. Falcon wrote.

Mr. Assanges long presence in the embassy, long after the Ecuadorean president who granted him political asylum had been replaced, finally became too much for the Ecuadorean government. President Lenin Moreno, elected in 2017, explained the decision on Twitter and in a video.

In a sovereign decision Ecuador withdrew the asylum status to Julian Assange after his repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols, he said.

He accused Mr. Assange of having installed forbidden electronic and distortion equipment, accessing the embassys security files without permission, blocking the embassys security cameras and mistreating its personnel, including guards.

In March of last year, the Ecuadorean government severed his internet access, saying that he had violated an agreement to stop commenting on, or trying to influence, the politics of other countries.

The government also limited his visitors and required him to clean his bathroom and look after his cat. Mr. Assange then sued the Ecuadorean government in October, claiming that it was violating his rights.

He hired the Spanish human rights jurist, Baltasar Garzn, who filed suit against the Ecuadorean government in its own courts, saying Mr. Assanges rights were violated. He also filed a second complaint with the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, an international body that mediates rights issues.

Both cases were rejected by officials, and further angered Mr. Morenos government.

A recent leak of papers last month related to Mr. Moreno, which the government blamed on WikiLeaks, further angered officials before Mr. Assanges eviction. The vast trove of emails, text messages and photos were known in Ecuador as the INA papers, named after a company linked to the presidents brother.

The leaked papers, first published by an independent Ecuadorean news site, described an extravagant life of the president and his family that included lavish dinners, expensive watches and trips around the world.

They included text messages between the presidents wife telling friends about family trips to Switzerland and New York and private pictures of Mr. Moreno, including one of him in a hotel room bed with a lobster meal. WikiLeaks denied involvement in the leaks, though it promoted the story on its Twitter site.

Days later, Mr. Moreno said that Mr. Assange had repeatedly violated the terms of his asylum and that Mr. Assange could not hack private accounts or phones.

Finally, Mr. Moreno said in his statement announcing the withdrawal of asylum, two days ago, WikiLeaks, Mr. Assanges allied organization, threatened the government of Ecuador. My government has nothing to fear and does not act under threats.

Mr. Moreno appeared to be referring to an effort by WikiLeaks to reveal the scale of surveillance of Mr. Assange within the embassy.

The editor in chief of WikiLeaks, Kristinn Hrafnsson, charged in a news conference this week that there had been extensive spying on Mr. Assange, and that Ecuador was part of a plot to extradite him to the United States.

What we have established is security has monitored his every move and every meeting with visitors, Mr. Hrafnsson said. We also know there was a request to hand over visit logs and video recordings from within the embassy.

We believe this has been handed over to the Trump administration, Mr. Hrafnsson added.

Mr. Hrafnsson also charged that the spying was part of a 3 million-euro extortion plot against Mr. Assange involving sex tapes.

The British police arrested Mr. Assange on Thursday on charges that he had jumped bail after his initial arrest in 2010 on a Swedish warrant.

The Swedes had wanted to question Mr. Assange on allegations of sexual misconduct and rape; in June 2012, Mr. Assange, even then fearing extradition to the United States, left his backers to lose their bail money while he successfully sought political asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy.

Only in May 2017, after many attempts to secure Mr. Assange and finally interview him on those charges, did Sweden give up and drop its arrest warrant.

Mr. Assange also gradually offended some of his early supporters, like Edward Snowden and the heiress Jemima Goldsmith Khan. He suffered from vitamin D deficiency, dental problems and depression. For some, he became a sort of joke, and many mocked his fear of extradition.

But there were times when thousands of supporters cheered Mr. Assanges work and what many considered his martyrdom in the name of individual rights and internet freedom. Hundreds would sometimes gather outside the embassy, to hear Mr. Assange address them from that tiny balcony.

British police officers arrived Thursday about 9:15 a.m. at the embassy, where the ambassador offered to serve Mr. Assange documentation revoking his asylum. He didnt go easily.

He resisted arrest and had to be restrained by officers, who struggled to handcuff him and received assistance from officers outside the embassy.

This is unlawful, Im not leaving, he told them, according to the account given at the Westminster Magistrates Court, where Mr. Assange later appeared, his silver hair tied in a bun, his tight lips visible behind a long, white beard, and looking composed in a navy suit.

Outside the court, a flock of cameras were pointing toward the guarded entrance, and a group of protesters chanted feebly Free, free, free Assange.

After Mr. Assange took his seat in court, a supporter wearing a scruffy fluorescent jacket gave him an enthusiastic thumbs-up from the public gallery.

Mr. Assange turned his head clinically toward the gallery, raised his arm, and returned the gesture.

While awaiting the lawyers to enter, Mr. Assange read from a book, which he raised for the media to see: History of the National Security State, by Gore Vidal.

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Julian Assanges Seven Strange Years in Self-Imposed ...

The first and only time I met Julian Assange was exactly nine years agoApril 12, 2010. He was in New York City to appear on The Colbert Report and I was working as an editor at The New York Times. We met in a coffee shop after the taping so I could interview him about his plans for WikiLeaks.

I remember thinking that he was taking this online secret-leaking business quite seriously. We were on a quiet side street in the West Village, but, like Malcolm X entering a restaurant, he surveyed the room to be sure that he wouldnt be sitting with his back to the door. He carried a satellite phone with him.

As the night wore on, Assange wondered where he could watch himself on the TV. Going to a bar to ask the barkeep to switch from sports to watch yourself on Comedy Central would be a bit show-offy, even for a platinum-haired renegade. And streaming TV on your phone just wasnt a thing yet. So I offered my fourth-floor walkup apartment, and at 11:30 that night Assange viewed his appearance on The Colbert Report from my living room/kitchen.

Noam Cohen is a journalist and author of The Know-It-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley as a Political Powerhouse and Social Wrecking Ball, which uses the history of computer science and Stanford University to understand the libertarian ideas promoted by tech leaders. While working for The New York Times, Cohen wrote some of the earliest articles about Wikipedia, bitcoin, Wikileaks, and Twitter. He lives with his family in Brooklyn.

The entire evening seemed way over the topperhaps even laughably so. Colbert, it appeared, had reached a similar conclusion about Assanges seriousness. He introduced his guest as the cofounder of WikiLeaks, which reveals corporate and government secret documents. For the first time, Colbert continued gravely, his show would be using pixelated imagery and voice-altering technology during the interview. Cut to Colberts face being pixelated and his voice being altered. Big laughs.

Then, after a short while, Colbert says: You know what Jimmy, I think you were right. I think its probably better to pixelate him and affect his voice, rather than mine. Has his face already been on camera? Have they seen him? Jimmy says, yes, and pixelated Colbert says, Oh, hes a dead man. Nervous laughs.

Back at my apartment, I remember that Assange told me and my girlfriend (now wife) what seemed like outrageous stories of his life. How he spent his childhood traveling Australia as part of his mothers theater troupe and visited Magnetic Island, which had strange properties that he implied influenced the minds of the people who lived there. He mentioned that he was part Chinese and that his last name derived from Ah Sang, an early ancestor.

It all seemed part of his mesmerizing performance, and then, a couple of months later, I saw those same details in a profile in The New Yorker, and I was further confused. Was the performance real or was reality a performance?

The Colbert interview was hardly clarifying concerning Assanges character; after all, Colbert himself was adopting the persona of a blowhard, right-wing commentator. WikiLeaks was in the news for decrypting and releasing a leaked video showing an attack by United States Army Apache helicopters in Baghdad three years earlier, which left 12 people dead, including two employees of the news agency Reuters. It had released an edited version of the encounter, which it titled Collateral Murder, as well as an unedited one.

Even though Colbert and Assange are discussing a battlefield horror, there is a giddiness throughout the encounter. Everything is played for a jokemuch as I thought at the time that Assange was (over)playing his roguish persona. Back then, it seems, what happened on the internet wasnt entirely real, at least not in the same way offline events could be.

Brian Stelter, now the host of CNNs Reliable Sources, on Thursday shared the article we wrote together at The New York Times about Collateral Murder and marveled at how understated the headline was: Iraq Video Brings Notice to a Web Site.

Nine years later, everything seems much more grave. We now know that a Web site can foment genocide, spread propaganda, misshape our politics, destroy entire industries. WikiLeaks went from exposing to public light a potential wartime atrocity to putting its finger on the thumb during a US presidential election by releasing material targeted at one of the candidates.

The giddiness is gone. On Thursday, the Julian Assange hauled out of the Ecuadoran embassy in Londonwhere he took refuge to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questions about sexual assault accusations, which he has deniedlooked exhausted. With his haggard face and wild beard, he seemed a distorted reflection of the trim, controlled man I met in 2010.

Today, as Assange faces a federal charge in the United States of conspiring to hack into a Pentagon computer network in that year, we debate how the law should consider Assange. He has gone from charismatic provocateur to, in some peoples eyes, a news publisher. Of course, being considered a publisher could be his ultimate provocation.

Colbert pushed Assange over WikiLeaks role as a distributor of the leaks it collects, starting with its decision to edit the leaked video of the Apache attack and to give it such a conclusory title. Thats not leaking thats a pure editorial, Colbert said. Which gave Assange the opportunity to explain his philosophy: The promise we make to our sources, is that not only will we defend them with every means that we have available, technological, and legally, and politically, but we will try to get the maximum possible political impact for the material they give to us.

That hardly seems like a journalistic standardit is a standard that fosters leaking, I suppose, and the controversy those leaks are intended to produce. You might even describe it as anarchic. Certainly, the events that followed at WikiLeaks make more sense in light of Assanges explanation.

Tongue fully in cheek, Colbert complains about WikiLeaks: If we dont know what the government is doing, we cant be sad about it. Why are you trying to make me sad? Yes, you are trying to bum us out about the world.

Assange responds with a peculiar smile, Just an interim state, Stephen, youll be happier later on.

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The Julian Assange I Met in 2010 Doesn't Exist Anymore

London --The former President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, sharply criticized the country's current president on Thursday for stripping WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of asylum status and allowing him to be arrested by U.K. police. "The greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history, Lenn Moreno, allowed the British police to enter our embassy in London to arrest Assange," Correa tweeted.

"Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget," the former leader said.

Assange had been living in Ecuador's embassy in London since he was granted asylum by Correa in 2012.

"Lenn Moreno was Correa's candidate," Richard Lapper, Associate Fellow at Chatham House's U.S. and the Americas Programme, told CBS News of the now-rivals. The left-wing leader was unable to run in Ecuador's 2017 elections because of the country's term limits, so he campaigned for Moreno, who was his one-time vice president.

"Correa expected Moreno to follow very similar policies to him. That hasn't happened. Lenn Moreno has pursued a more social democratic, more centrist political line," Lapper said.

As tensions grew in Ecuador between Correa and Moreno supporters over the shift, a large trove of hacked documents, dubbed the "INA Papers," was leaked on the internet. It included material belonging to Moreno which some people believe shows he profited from corrupt business dealings. WikiLeaks tweeted a link to the papers, but denied having anything to do with their publication, the Daily Beast reported.

On Thursday, Correa tweeted: "Julian Assange was expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy for exposing Pres. Lenin Moreno's corruption in the #INAPapers." His tweet included bank details that he alleged were a secret account used by Moreno for money laundering.

Earlier in the day, Moreno tweeted a video statement announcing that the country would be revoking Assange's asylum status.

"Ours is a government respectful of the principles of international law, and of the institution of the right of asylum. Granting or withdrawing asylum is a sovereign right of the Ecuadorian state, according to international law," Moreno said in the prerecorded message.

"Today, I announce that the discourteous and aggressive behavior of Mr. Julian Assange, the hostile and threatening declarations of its allied organization, against Ecuador, and especially, the transgression of international treaties have led the situation to a point where the asylum of Mr. Assange is unsustainable and no longer viable," he said.

"Ecuador is pursuing a more pro-Western foreign policy than it did under Correa," Lapper told CBS News. "They've sought to diversify their trade and investment relations, and so (that) entails being more pragmatic, basically, in their policies."

"I think there are very good reasons for Ecuador to pursue the kind of approach it's pursuing now, especially when you look over the border in Venezuela and see what an absolute humanitarian disaster 'Chavismo' has created there," explained Lapper. "Moreno, like some of the other governments in Latin America, is taking his distance from that."

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How Ecuador's shifting politics led to Julian Assange's ...

Federal prosecutors in the United States unsealed a computer hacking indictment against Julian Assange on Thursday just hours after authorities in the United Kingdom arrested the WikiLeaks founder at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has lived for the past seven years.

The newly unsealed indictment, filed last year in the Eastern District of Virginia, targets Assange in an alleged conspiracy with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst turned whistleblower Chelsea Manning to hack into U.S. Department of Defense computers in March 2010, in "one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States."

"During the conspiracy, Manning and Assange engaged in real-time discussions regarding Mannings transmission of classified records to Assange," prosecutors said in a press release."The discussions also reflect Assange actively encouraging Manning to provide more information. During an exchange, Manning told Assange that after this upload, thats all I really have got left. To which Assange replied, curious eyes never run dry in my experience, the release said.

Prosecutors wrote that Assange was arrested pursuant to a U.S.-U.K. extradition treaty, but when or even if that would happen was unclear.

The dramatic arrest of Assange played out Thursday morning in London, when Metropolitan Police executed a warrant for Assange's arrest on behalf of Westminster Magistrates' Court. Police said they were invited into the Ecuadorian Embassy by Ambassador Carlos Abad Ortiz after the Ecuadorian government withdrew the WikiLeaks founder's asylum status.

During his initial court appearance on Thursday, Assange offered no evidence and was found guilty of breaching his bail. The judge described Assange as a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests.

He now faces up to 12 months in jail and will be sentenced at a later date. Until then, Assange will remain in custody.

The warrant for his "failure to appear dates back to a now-closed rape inquiry in Sweden that had been active for the past seven years. The rape investigation was dropped by Swedish prosecutors in 2017 as they could not gain access to Assange while he was inside the Ecuadorean Embassy, but Swedish prosecutors announced Thursday their intention to re-open the rape investigation against Assange.

WikiLeaks advocates and Assanges legal team leapt to his defense on Thursday morning, decrying his arrest and prospective extradition to the U.S.

Carlos Poveda, Assange's lawyer in Ecuador, claimed the arrest contravened international conventions on human rights. Barry Pollack, Assange's U.S.-based attorney, described the news as "bitterly disappointing."

Addressing reporters after his initial appearance, Assange's lawyer Jennifer Robinson vowed that his legal team would "be contesting and fighting extradition" and argued that Assange's arrest and indictment "sets dangerous precedent for all media organizations and journalists."

In a tweet, WikiLeaks wrote that Powerful actors, including CIA, are engaged in a sophisticated effort to dehumanise, delegitimize and imprison [Assange], and Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who leaked details of a secret domestic data mining program, bemoaned the "weakness of the US charge against Assange."

The American actress Pamela Anderson, a confidante of Assange's in recent years, wrote on Twitter, "I am in shock ... how could you UK?"

Meanwhile, government officials in the U.K. and Ecuador applauded Assanges arrest.

Sir Alan Duncan, the British government's Minister of State for Europe and the Americas, said in a statement that it was "absolutely right that Assange will face justice."

The U.K.'s Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, wrote in a tweet that "Julian Assange is no hero and no one is above the law.

Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno announced on Thursday that Assange's diplomatic asylum and immunity had been withdrawn for "repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocol.

Assange, an Australian native, founded the website WikiLeaks in 2006 and drew attention over the next decade for releasing sensitive, and often classified, information.

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrested after 7 years of ...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested in London by British police Thursday after being expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy and hell now likely face extradition to the United States.

We can confirm that Julian Assange was arrested in relation to a provisional extradition request from the United States of America, the UK Home Office said in a statement. He is accused in the United States of America of computer related offences.

Then the Justice Department unsealed an indictment of Assange filed in March 2018. In it, he is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, related to the leaks of US government documents he received from then-US Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning in 2010.

Assange has had an outstanding arrest warrant in the United Kingdom for years because, back in 2012, he skipped out on bail to avoid extradition related to sexual assault allegations against him in Sweden.

He took refuge in Ecuadors London embassy, where he had been holed up for nearly seven years. Swedish prosecutors rescinded their warrant for him during that time, but Assange remained in the embassy for just this reason: because he feared there were secret US charges against him. However, his relations with the Ecuadorian government soured after a new president took power, leading to his ultimate expulsion from the embassy.

Assange has dogged the US government with a series of leaks over the past decade such as the war documents and State Department cables provided by Manning, and CIA hacking material.

Also, infamously, in 2016, Assange posted emails that had been hacked from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers with carrying out this hack and leak operation, but he did not file charges against Assange.

Instead, the WikiLeaks founder is being charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion specifically, that he agreed to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on Defense Department computers that didnt belong with her.

Assanges lawyer Barry Pollack said in a statement that this charge is mainly about encouraging a source to provide him information and taking efforts to protect the identity of that source, adding that journalists around the world should be deeply troubled by these unprecedented charges.

For now, Assange is not being charged with any other crimes (such as the Espionage Act or crimes related to classified information). But CNN reported Thursday morning that the Justice Department expects to bring additional charges against him.

Assange is an Australian hacktivist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006, with the stated goal of publishing information the powerful were trying to keep secret. The group had its greatest successes in obtaining and posting US military, national security, and foreign policy documents, and Assange was a harsh critic of what he deemed the USs imperialist ambitions.

Starting in 2010, WikiLeaks published a video of an airstrike in Iraq that killed civilians, military documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and State Department cables in which diplomats gave candid assessments of foreign governments all provided by US Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning. The unprecedented leaks gained enormous attention and made Assange a sort of celebrity and a target, as top US officials like Attorney General Eric Holder publicly mused about how they could charge him.

So in June 2012, Assange, a citizen of Australia who had lived abroad for several years, showed up at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and asked for political asylum. His imminent danger was extradition to Sweden, where authorities were investigating a rape allegation against him. But Assanges pitch was that he truly needed asylum from the United States because of WikiLeaks work. The Ecuadorian government granted his request, and hes been holed up inside the embassy ever since for nearly seven years now.

In that time, WikiLeaks has continued to post new material and grown more controversial. Assange roiled the 2016 presidential campaign by posting hacked emails from, first, the Democratic National Committee and then Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. (Mueller has since charged several Russian intelligence officers with carrying out these hacks.)

Was Assange simply bringing more transparency by publishing powerful peoples communications? Was he effectively just helping out the Russians and Donald Trump? Was he engaged in a project to weaken the US politically? Perhaps it was all of the above. (We believe it would be much better for GOP to win, Assange wrote privately in late 2015, according to messages obtained by the Intercept. Hillary Clinton, he continued, was a bright, well connected, sadistic sociopath.)

But Assanges leaks didnt stop once Trump was elected. In early 2017, WikiLeaks posted a new set of material about the CIAs hacking capabilities, in a leak referred to as Vault 7. The New York Times wrote that this appeared to be the largest leak of CIA documents in history, and a former CIA software engineer, Joshua Schulte, has been charged in connection with it.

That year, however, Assanges position in the Ecuadorian Embassy began to grow tenuous, as a new and more centrist president, Lenn Moreno, took power in the country. Moreno has said that Assange has repeatedly violated the conditions of his asylum. And now the embassy has kicked him out, leading to his arrest by British police.

On March 8, 2018, the US Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of Virginia filed a one-count indictment against Assange, under seal. (It was unsealed Thursday morning, after his arrest.)

In it, Assange was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, related to Mannings 2010 leaks.

Specifically, the indictment focuses on how, after Manning had already leaked hundreds of thousands of documents to Assange, the WikiLeaks founder allegedly agreed to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on United States Defense Department computers.

Cracking the password would have allowed Manning to log onto the computers under a username that did not belong to her, the indictment claims.

Prosecutors claim that on March 8, 2010, Manning had told Assange, after this upload, thats all I really have got left, and that Assange responded, curious eyes never run dry in my experience.

However, there does not seem to have been any success in cracking the password. The indictment claims that on March 10, 2010, Assange said hed had no luck so far, and theres no further information on the matter.

This charge against Assange is rather narrowly tailored but we know the Justice Department has long considered broader charges against him, and CNN reported Thursday that additional charges are indeed still in the works.

The US government has already charged people whom theyve accused of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, like Manning and Schulte. But charging Assange or WikiLeaks solely for publishing such information has been viewed by many as more troubling, due to its implications for freedom of the press.

Never in the history of this country has a publisher been prosecuted for presenting truthful information to the public, the American Civil Liberties Unions Ben Wizner told CNN in 2017. Any prosecution of WikiLeaks for publishing government secrets would set a dangerous precedent that the Trump administration would surely use to target other news organizations.

Indeed, many journalists often publish important and newsworthy stories based on leaked classified information. This was one reason why the Obama Justice Department opted not to charge Assange they called it a New York Times problem, the Washington Posts Sari Horwitz reported in 2013.

If the Justice Department indicted Assange, it would also have to prosecute the New York Times and other news organizations and writers who published classified material, including The Washington Post and Britains Guardian newspaper, Horwitz wrote, describing the officials conclusions.

Manning, meanwhile, is currently in jail, after she refused to testify to a grand jury against Assange last month. This is another sign that further charges against Assange could be coming, since the newly unsealed indictment was filed more than a year ago.

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Julian Assange arrested: WikiLeaks founder to face ...

Picture the scene: The 2020 presidential election is six months away, and a reporter is sent a cache of emails from inside one of the campaigns. The source of the cache has dubious motivations, but there's no doubt the emails are genuine. What should the reporter do?

The answer, for reporters and editors at least, is obvious. You comb through the emails for the newsworthy stuff, then you publish. The decision about what is in the public interest is, ultimately, up to the reporter and their editors. Officials, prosecutors, and judges may later decide whether laws were broken, and, importantly, whether that breach was justified. But these are all ultimately subjective decisions. Much like obscenity, what's in the public interest is never quite defined but we know it when we see it.

These are the kind of decisions that Julian Assange, and the hundreds of media organizations across the world that have published his leaks, made dozens of times over the last decade. As he faces extradition to the United States over one of those leaks one that resulted in extensive coverage from almost every major newspaper in the world we need to be very clear about whats at stake.

The charges announced by the Department of Justice yesterday send a chilling message to journalists and whistleblowers, because what Assange did to receive secret military and diplomatic documents the crime of which he is now accused was what thousands of journalists do every day. He was contacted by a source with potentially useful information; he cultivated and encouraged that source to give him as much raw detail as possible; and then, in partnership with publications of note from across the globe, he published the best bits.

This, and nothing else, is what Assange could face prosecution for. If any journalist, or any consumer of journalism, cannot see a problem with that, then the media may be in an even worse state then we fear.

Leaks are the absolute lifeblood of journalism. Australian journalist Murray Sayle is credited with the formulation that there are really only two stories in journalism: "We name the guilty man" and "Arrow points to defective part."

In recent years, I have established a formulation of my own: The three greatest words in journalism are "disgruntled former employee." I have had the privilege of judging investigative magazine Private Eyes annual investigative journalism award, and from that I have seen time and again how leakers may be self-sacrificing, public-spirited, and essentially decent people. They may also just be people who bear grudges, or people trying to undermine a politician. Journalists shouldnt be in the business of distinguishing between these motivations, if the news is good enough to print.

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks emerged at a point when journalism, and society as a whole, was still optimistic about the internet. Transparency will set us free, we used to say back then.

In 2008 I was working for Index on Censorship, and we awarded WikiLeaks a New Media Award, sponsored by the Economist. WikiLeaks had published papers belonging to a Swiss bank, Julius Baer, which it said strongly suggested a money laundering operation. This was one of the earliest of the mass data exposs that have characterized investigative journalism in the past decade, and it was exciting.

Even then, working with WikiLeaks was enormously frustrating. In the weeks leading up to the award ceremony, Assange went silent on us. We had arranged for the journalist Martin Bright, who recently had his own travails with the state and whistleblowers over Iraq war intelligence, to pick up the award on Assanges behalf. About 15 minutes before the ceremony was due to start, a member of the venue staff told me there was a man asking for me at the caterers entrance. It was Julian Assange then, as now, addicted to drama. He was apparently paranoid enough to avoid the main entrance, but not quite paranoid enough to avoid accepting an award in front of most of the British media and legal elite, who had paid good money to bask in the presence of worthy dissidents.

The pattern would repeat: While WikiLeaks would occasionally do stupid things, such as publishing Sarah Palins private family photos what newspaper has not made a similar mistake? the good appeared to outweigh the bad. After WikiLeaks exposed the workings of Kaupthing Bank the institution widely blamed for Icelands financial collapse in 2008 and 09 Icelandic politicians embraced Assanges radical vision and created the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative. Iceland would become a safe haven for whistleblowers, hackers, and internet freedom activists.

The Iraq War Logs and US diplomatic cables leak probably represented WikiLeaks zenith, but also the point where people began to question Assanges judgment. His enthusiasm for full transparency for those he perceived as powerful elites was only matched by his own demand for full secrecy from those around him. And a hypocrisy was becoming clear: Assanges definition of "power" and "elite" often stretched only as far as Western governments and their allies. Tyrants such as Belaruss Alexander Lukashenko (and later, Vladimir Putin) did not figure. At an Index on Censorship event in late 2010, Assange embarrassed the free speechfocused organizers by demanding no press photographers be allowed in the room.

We broke with Assange shortly afterward, when WikiLeaks refused to answer questions about unusual dealings in Belarus. Since then, Assanges political leanings have steadily veered towards terrible, from Putin to Donald Trump and Nigel Farage.

All this is history, but its a history worth telling, because its important to remember that WikiLeaks and Assange were embraced by progressives and the media not just for the "wrong" reasons (reflexive anti-Westernism) but for the "right" reasons too. WikiLeaks provided crucial insights into the key failures of the financial crisis and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and put whistleblowing center stage. Assange, in a curious way, actually tamed the fundamentalist hack-for-the-sake-of-it tendencies of his internet peers, though he never quite shook the idea that there could not be such thing as a good secret (except when it came to himself).

Julian Assange went on the run in Britain, betraying people from John Pilger to Jemima Khan who had posted bail for him as a matter of trust: For that alone he is a traitor to his friends, and a criminal who has been found guilty. He has gone to extreme lengths to avoid facing sexual assault accusations in Sweden: For that, he is a coward and a misogynist who should face up to the consequences of his actions and attitudes toward women.

Some say he had been working with Putins Russia, in which case evidence should be brought.

But the charge brought against him by the US is about an act of journalism an act people may agree or disagree with, but which should not take up the time of a federal jury.

In Britain, as I type this, police are attempting to prosecute a pair of journalists for using material supposedly "stolen" from police in their investigation of a massacre of Catholic football fans watching a game during the 1994 World Cup. They have an important story to tell, and that is likely why the police want to stop them telling it. This habit will be replicated across the world if the US sets the example that its OK to shoot the messenger.

If the US prosecutes the WikiLeaks founder on the charge currently laid before him, its not just Julian Assange who's in trouble.

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WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Did A Lot Of Bad Things ...