Storbritannien: Sverige har förtur till Assange

Julian Paul Assange (/əˈsɒnʒ/; born Julian Paul Hawkins, 3 July 1971) is an Australian computer programmer, publisher and journalist. He is editor-in-chief of the organisation WikiLeaks, which he founded in 2006. He has won numerous accolades for journalism, including the Sam Adams Award and Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006 but came to global prominence in 2010 when WikiLeaks published a series of leaks, provided by Chelsea Manning. These leaks included the Collateral Murder video (April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), and CableGate (November 2010). Following the 2010 leaks, the United States government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks and asked allied nations for assistance. In November 2010, a request was made for Assange's extradition to Sweden, where he had been questioned months earlier over allegations of sexual assault and rape. Assange continued to deny the allegations, and expressed concern that he would be extradited from Sweden to the United States due to his perceived role in publishing secret American documents. Assange surrendered himself to UK police on 7 December 2010 and was held for ten days in solitary confinement before being released on bail. He sought and was granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012. He has since remained in the Embassy of Ecuador in London, and is unable to leave without being arrested for breaching his bail conditions. In 2016, WikiLeaks published the DNC leaks and the Podesta emails during the 2016 United States presidential election.