WELLINGTON, New Zealand: He emerged on the information security scene in the 1990s as a “famous teenage hacker” following what he called an ” itinerant minstrel childhood” beginning in Townsville, Australia. But the story of Julian Assange, eccentric founder of secret-spilling website WikiLeaks, never became less strange — or less polarizing — after he jolted the United States and its allies by revealing secrets of how America conducted its wars.
Since Assange drew global attention in 2010 for his work with prominent news outlets to publish war logs and diplomatic cables that detailed US military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other matters, he has provoked fervor among his admirers and loathing from his detractors with little in-between — seen either as a persecuted hero for open and transparent government, or a villain who put American lives at risk by aiding its enemies, and prompting fraught debates about state secrecy and freedom of the press.
Assange, 52, grew up attending “37 schools” before he was 14 years old, he wrote on his now-deleted blog. The details in it are not independently verifiable and some of Assange’s biographical details differ between accounts and interviews. A memoir published against his will in 2011, after he fell out with his ghostwriter, described him as the son of roving puppeteers, and he told The New Yorker in 2010 that his mother’s itinerant lifestyle barred him from a consistent or complete education. But by the age of 16, in 1987, he had his first modem, he told the magazine. Assange would burst forth as an accomplished hacker who with his friends broke into networks in North America and Europe.
In 1991, aged 20, Assange hacked a Melbourne terminal for a Canadian telecommunications company, leading to his arrest by the Australian Federal Police and 31 criminal charges. After pleading guilty to some counts, he avoided jail time after the presiding judge attributed his crimes to merely “intelligent inquisitiveness and the pleasure of being able to – what’s the expression? – surf through these various computers.”
He later studied mathematics and physics at university, but did not complete a degree. By 2006, when he founded WikiLeaks, Assange’s delight at being able to traverse locked computer systems seemingly for fun developed into a belief that, as he wrote on his blog, “only revealed injustice can be answered; for man to do anything intelligent he has to know what’s actually going on.”
In the year of WikiLeaks’ explosive 2010 release of half a million documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the non-profit organization’s website was registered in Sweden and its legal entity in Iceland. Assange was “living in airports,” he told The New Yorker; he claimed his media company, with no paid staff, had hundreds of volunteers.
He called his work a kind of “scientific journalism,” Assange wrote in a 2010 op-ed in The Australian newspaper, in which readers could check reporting against the original documents that had prompted a story. Among the most potent in the cache of files published by WikiLeaks was video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.
Assange was not anti-war, he wrote in The Australian.
“But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies,” he said. “If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.”
US prosecutors later said documents published by Assange included the names of Afghans and Iraqis who provided information to American and coalition forces, while the diplomatic cables he released exposed journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates and dissidents in repressive countries.
Assange said in a 2010 interview that it was “regrettable” that sources disclosed by WikiLeaks could be harmed, prosecutors said. Later, after a State Department legal adviser informed him of the risk to “countless innocent individuals” compromised by the leaks, Assange said he would work with mainstream news organizations to redact the names of individuals. WikiLeaks did hide some names but then published 250,000 cables a year later without hiding the identities of people named in the papers.
Weeks after the release of the largest document cache in 2010, a Swedish prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Assange based on one woman’s allegation of rape and another’s allegation of molestation.
Assange has always denied the accusations and, from Britain, fought efforts to extradite him to Sweden for questioning. He decried the allegations as a smear campaign and an effort to move him to a jurisdiction where he might be extradited to the US
When his appeal against the extradition to Sweden failed, he breached his bail imposed in Britain and presented himself to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he claimed asylum on the grounds of political persecution. There followed seven years in self-exile inside the embassy — and one of the most unusual chapters in an already strange tale.
Refusing to go outside, where British police awaited him around the clock, Assange made occasional forays onto the embassy’s balcony to address supporters.
With a sunlamp and running machine helping to preserve his health, he told The Associated Press and other reporters in 2013, he remained in the news due to a stream of celebrity visitors, including Lady Gaga and the designer Vivienne Westwood. Even his cat became famous.
He also continued to run WikiLeaks and mounted an unsuccessful Australian senate campaign in 2013 with the newly founded WikiLeaks party. Before a constant British police presence around the embassy was removed in 2015, it cost UK taxpayers millions of dollars.
But relations with his host country soured, and the Ecuadorian Embassy severed his Internet access after posts Assange made on social media. In 2019, his hosts revoked his asylum, allowing British police to arrest him.
Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno said he decided to evict Assange from the embassy after “repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols.” He later lashed out at him during a speech in Quito, calling the Australian native a “spoiled brat” who treated his hosts with disrespect.
Assange was arrested and jailed on a charge of breaching bail conditions and spent the next five years in prison as he continued to fight his extradition to the United States.
In 2019, the US government unsealed an indictment against Assange and added further charges over WikiLeaks’ publication of classified documents. Prosecutors said he conspired with US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer and release secret diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Manning had served seven years of a 35-year military sentence before receiving a commutation from then-President Barack Obama.
At the time, Australia’s then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he had no plans to intervene in Assange’s case, calling it a matter for the US The same year, Swedish prosecutors dropped the rape allegation against Assange because too much time had elapsed since the accusation was made over nine years earlier.
As the case over his extradition wound through the British courts over the following years, Assange remained in Belmarsh Prison, where, his wife told the BBC on Tuesday, he was in a “terrible state” of health.
Assange married his partner, Stella Moris, in jail in 2022, after a relationship that began during Assange’s years in the Ecuadorian Embassy. Assange and the South Africa-born lawyer have two sons, born in 2017 and 2019.
Who is Julian Assange, the polarizing founder of the secret-spilling website WikiLeaks?
https://arab.news/bwgv9
Who is Julian Assange, the polarizing founder of the secret-spilling website WikiLeaks?

- Assange drew global attention in 2010 publishing war logs and diplomatic cables detailing US military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan
- He is seen either as a persecuted hero for open and transparent government, or a villain who put American lives at risk
Iran summons British envoy after arrest of nationals

TEHRAN: Iran has summoned a British envoy in Tehran to protest the arrest of several of its nationals on charges of spying, state media reported Monday.
“Following the unjustified arrest of a number of Iranian nationals in the UK... the British charge d’affaires in Tehran was summoned on Sunday,” the IRNA news agency said, describing the arrests as “politically motivated.”
Three Iranian men appeared in a London court on Saturday charged with spying for the Islamic republic.
They were arrested on May 3 and identified as Mostafa Sepahvand, 39, Farhad Javadi Manesh, 44, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 55, all living in London.
The British Home Office said they were irregular migrants who arrived by small boat or other means, such as hidden in a vehicle, between 2016 and 2022.
The alleged spying took place from August 2024 to February 2025, according to UK police.
A fourth man was arrested on May 9 as part of the investigation, but has now been released without charge, the police said in a statement.
Five Iranians were also arrested on May 3 in a separate investigation.
Four of the men — who had been held on suspicion of preparation of a terrorist act — had been released, although the investigation “remains active and is ongoing,” police said.
The fifth was earlier bailed to an unspecified date in May.
Indonesia searches for 19 people after landslide at gold mine in Papua

JAKARTA: Indonesian rescue teams were searching for 19 people missing after heavy rain caused a landslide at a gold mine in its easternmost region of Papua, officials said on Monday.
Torrential rain triggered a landslide late on Friday in a small-scale mine run by local residents in the Arfak mountains in West Papua province, said Abdul Muhari, the spokesperson of Indonesia's disaster mitigation agency.
The landslide hit temporary shelters used by the miners and killed at least one person and injured four with 19 others still missing, he added.
At least 40 rescuers with police and military personnel had been deployed to search for the missing, officials said.
Small-scale and illegal mining has often led to accidents in Indonesia, where mineral resources are located in remote areas in conditions difficult for authorities to regulate.
The rescuers started the search operation only on Sunday because it took at least 12 hours for teams to travel to the site, Yefri Sabaruddin, the head of the local rescue team, told Reuters on Monday.
"The damaged roads and mountainous tracks as well as bad weather hampered the rescue efforts," Yefri said.
The number of casualties could rise, he added.
At least 15 people died in the collapse of an illegal gold mine in West Sumatra province September last year after a landslide caused by heavy rains.
Another landslide in a gold mine on Sulawesi island killed at least 23 people in July last year.
Trump to hold call with Putin in push for Ukraine ceasefire

- Says he would also speak to Ukraine's President Zelensky and NATO officials
- Trump has repeatedly stressed that he wants to see an end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump will hold a phone call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Monday as part of his long-running effort to end the war set off by Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Trump had vowed during the US election campaign to halt the conflict within a day of taking office, but his diplomatic efforts have so far yielded little progress.
Delegations from Russia and Ukraine held direct negotiations in Istanbul last week for the first time in almost three years, but the talks ended without a commitment to a ceasefire.
Both sides traded insults, with Ukraine accusing Moscow of sending a “dummy” delegation of low-ranking officials.
After the negotiations, Trump announced that he would speak by phone with the Russian president in a bid to end the “bloodbath” in Ukraine, which has destroyed large swathes of the country and displaced millions of people.
Trump also said he would speak to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO officials, expressing hope that a “ceasefire will take place, and this very violent war... will end.”
Since taking office in January, Trump has repeatedly stressed that he wants to see an end to the conflict, and has recently backed calls for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.
So far, he has mainly focused on upping the pressure on Ukraine and abstained from criticizing Putin.
Both Moscow and Washington have previously stressed the need for a meeting on the conflict between Putin and Trump.
The US president has also argued that “nothing’s going to happen” on the conflict until he meets Putin face-to-face.
At the talks in Istanbul, which were also attended by US officials, Russia and Ukraine agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners each and trade ideas on a possible truce, but with no concrete commitment.
Ukraine’s top negotiator, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, said that the “next step” would be a meeting between Putin and Zelensky.
Russia said it had taken note of the request.
“We consider it possible, but only as a result of the work and upon achieving certain results in the form of an agreement between the two sides,” the Kremlin’s spokesperson said.
Ukraine’s western allies have since accused Putin of deliberately ignoring calls for a ceasefire and pushed for fresh sanctions against Russia.
The leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy held a phone call with Trump on Sunday.
“Looking ahead to President Trump’s call with President Putin tomorrow, the leaders discussed the need for an unconditional ceasefire and for President Putin to take peace talks seriously,” said a spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“They also discussed the use of sanctions if Russia failed to engage seriously in a ceasefire and peace talks,” the spokesman said.
Zelensky also discussed possible sanctions with US Vice President JD Vance when they met after Pope Leo’s inaugural mass at the Vatican on Sunday.
“We discussed the talks in Istanbul, where the Russians sent a low-level delegation with no decision-making powers,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram following the meeting.
“We also touched on the need for sanctions against Russia, bilateral trade, defense cooperation, the situation on the battlefield and the future exchange of prisoners.”
A senior Ukrainian official from the president’s office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP that they had also discussed preparations for Monday’s telephone conversation between Trump and Putin.
It was the first meeting between Zelensky and Vance since their heated White House exchange in February.
In the Oval Office, Vance publicly accused Zelensky of being “disrespectful” toward Trump, who told the Ukrainian leader he should be more grateful and that he had no “cards” to play in negotiations with Russia.
Ukraine on Sunday said that Russia had launched a record number of drones at the country overnight, targeting various regions, including the capital Kyiv, where a woman was killed.
Another man was killed in the southeastern Kherson region, where a railway station and private houses and cars were hit.
In an interview with Russian state TV published on Sunday, Putin said that Moscow’s aim was to “eliminate the causes that triggered this crisis, create the conditions for a lasting peace and guarantee Russia’s security,” without elaborating further.
Russia’s references to the “root causes” of the conflict typically refer to grievances with Kyiv and the West that Moscow has put forward as justification for launching the invasion in February 2022.
They include pledges to “de-Nazify” and demilitarise Ukraine, protect Russian speakers in the country’s east, push back against NATO expansion and stop Ukraine’s westward geopolitical drift.
However, Kyiv and the West say that Russia’s invasion is an imperial-style land grab.
Trump to carry out tariff threats if nations don’t negotiate in ‘good faith,’ US treasury chief warns

- Bessent: Notified countries likely to see April 2 rates return
- Says Trump administration was focused on its 18 most important trading relationships
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump will impose tariffs at the rate he threatened last month on trading partners that do not negotiate in “good faith” on deals, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in television interviews on Sunday.
He did not say what would constitute “good faith” negotiations or clarify the timing to announce any decisions to return a country to the various rates Trump initially imposed on April 2.
Trump has repeatedly reversed course since then, notably on April 9, when he lowered his tariff rates on most imported goods to 10 percent for 90 days to give negotiators time to hash out deals with other countries. He separately lowered the rate for Chinese goods to 30 percent. On Friday, he reiterated that his administration would send letters telling nations what their rates would be.
On Sunday, Bessent said the administration was focused on its 18 most important trading relationships and that the timing of any deals would also depend on whether countries were negotiating in good faith, with letters going out to those that did not.
“This means that they’re not negotiating in good faith. They are going to get a letter saying, ‘Here is the rate.’ So I would expect that everyone would come and negotiate in good faith,” he told NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
He added that those countries that are notified would likely see their rates return to the levels set on April 2.
Asked when any trade deals could be announced, Bessent separately told CNN’s “State of the Union” program: “Again, it will depend on whether they’re negotiating in good faith.”
“My other sense is that we will do a lot of regional deals -this is the rate for Central America. This is the rate for this part of Africa,” he added.
Trump’s ongoing trade wars have severely disrupted global trade flows and roiled financial markets as investors grapple with what Bessent has called the Republican president’s “strategic uncertainty,” in his drive to reshape economic relationships in the US’ favor
Companies of all sizes have been whipsawed by Trump’s swift imposition of tariffs and sudden reversals as they seek to manage supply chains, production, staffing and prices. Congress is also grappling with the tariffs as it weighs revenues and tax cuts in its spending bill.
Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, last week said it would have to start raising prices later in May due to the high costs of tariffs, prompting Trump to slam the company for blaming the increases on his trade policies.
“Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, ‘EAT THE TARIFFS,’ and not charge valued customers ANYTHING,” Trump posted online on Saturday.
Bessent said he had spoken to Walmart CEO Doug McMillon on Saturday and that the company would absorb some tariffs. Representatives for the retailer declined to comment.
“Walmart is, in fact, going to ... eat some of the tariffs,” Bessent told NBC. “I didn’t apply any pressure.”
Britain poised to reset trade and defense ties with EU

- Starmer taking a political risk with closer EU ties
- Deal likely to cover defense, trade, fish
LONDON Britain is poised to agree the most significant reset of ties with the European Union since Brexit on Monday, seeking closer collaboration on trade and defense to help grow the economy and boost security on the continent.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who backed remaining in the EU, has made a bet that securing tangible benefits for Britons will outweigh any talk of “Brexit betrayal” from critics like Reform UK leader Nigel Farage when he agrees closer EU alignment at a summit in London.
Starmer will argue that the world has changed since Britain left the bloc in 2020, and at the heart of the new reset will be a defense and security pact that could pave the way for British defense companies to take part in a 150 billion euros ($167 billion) program to rearm Europe.
The reset follows US President Donald Trump’s upending of the post-war global order and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which have forced governments around the world to rethink ties on trade, defense and security. Britain struck a full trade deal with India earlier this month and secured some tariff relief from the United States. The EU has also accelerated efforts to forge trade deals with the likes of India and deepen partnerships with countries including Canada, Australia, Japan and Singapore.
Negotiations between the two sides continued into Sunday evening, before European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa were due in London on Monday morning. One EU diplomat cautioned that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” From the issues up for discussion, Britain is hoping to drastically reduce the border checks and paperwork slowing down UK and EU food and agricultural exports, while access to faster e-gates for UK travelers at EU airports would be hugely popular.
In return, Britain is expected to agree to a limited youth mobility scheme and could participate in the Erasmus+ student exchange program. France also wants a long-term deal on fishing rights, one of the most emotive issues during Brexit.
Limited room for maneuver
Britain’s vote to leave the EU in a historic referendum in 2016 revealed a country that was badly divided over everything from migration and sovereignty of power to culture and trade.
It helped trigger one of the most tumultuous periods in British political history, with five prime ministers holding office before Starmer arrived last July, and poisoned relations with Brussels.
Polls show a majority of Britons now regret the vote although they do not want to rejoin. Farage, who campaigned for Brexit for decades, leads opinion polls in Britain, giving Starmer limited room for maneuver.
But the prime minister and French President Emmanuel Macron have struck up a solid relationship over their support for Ukraine, and Starmer was not tainted with the Brexit rows that went before, helping to improve sentiment.
‘Break the taboo’
The economic benefit will be limited by Starmer’s promise to not rejoin the EU’s single market or customs union, but he has instead sought to negotiate better market access in some areas — a difficult task when the EU opposes so-called “cherry picking” of EU benefits without the obligations of membership.
Removing red tape on food trade will require Britain to accept EU oversight on standards, but Starmer is likely to argue that it is worth it to help lower the cost of food, and grow the sluggish economy.
Agreeing a longer-term fishing rights deal will also be opposed by Farage, while the opposition Conservative Party labelled Monday’s event as the “surrender summit.”
One trade expert who has advised politicians in both London and Brussels said the government needed to “break the taboo” on accepting EU rules, and doing so to help farmers and small businesses was smart.
Trade experts also said Britain benefited from the greater focus on defense, making the deal look more reciprocal, and said improved ties made sense in a more volatile world.
When “trade disruption is so visible and considerable” anything that reduced trade friction with a country’s biggest trading partner made sense, said Allie Renison, a former UK government trade official at consultancy SEC Newgate.