Julian Assange: super hacker

Rape charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange have been dropped, amid claims they were part of a US-lead ‘dirty tricks’ campaign. Here is the background.

By Robert Carry

Australian-born Julian Assange first hit the headlines back in 2007 when his Wikileaks website released video footage taken from a US Apache helicopter in Iraq in 2007. The images, picked up by the world’s media, showed the Americans killing at least 12 people including two Reuters journalists.

The site published a range of other sensitive material from around the world including a British National Party membership list. Last month, however, Wikileaks went on to publish tens of thousands of secret US military documents on the war in Afghanistan.

Operators of the site then intercepted a document from the US intelligence services which claimed Wikileaks represented a "threat to the US Army". The BBC later received confirmation from the US government that the documents were genuine.

The revelations were quickly followed by Swedish authorities issuing an arrest warrant for Assange, stating that he had been accused of rape and molestation of two 20 to 30-year-old women. Assange said the charges were “without basis” and described them “deeply disturbing”.

Sweden moved to counter speculation the warrant was part of a Pentagon 'dirty tricks' campaign against Wikileaks and Assange. Their case was harmed, however, by the fact that they broke normal protocol by confirming that Assange was accused of the charges to members of the press.

The accusations triggered fury among NGOs and rights organisations, and speculation mounted this weekend when a senior prosecutor overturned the rape arrest warrant.

The saga has undoubtedly increased Assange’s profile. Here’s some facts about the international incident-triggering Aussie:

• Julian Paul Assange was born in Townsville, a remote town in north-eastern Australia in 1971. Assange's parents ran a touring theatre company and, in 1979, his mother remarried to a musician who belonged to a cult called the Great White Brotherhood founded and led by a yoga teacher.

• Assange moved home on dozens of occasions during childhood and went out on his own as a 16-year-old.

• In the late 1980s Assange joined hacker group International Subversives. His activities caught the attention of the authorities and in 1992 he pleaded guilty to 24 charges of hacking.

• Assange, described by those who know him as intense and highly intelligent, spent much of the following years working on free software and encryption systems.

• In 2003, Assange began studying physics and mathematics at the University of Melbourne until 2006 when he founded the Wikileaks site and currently acts as its editor and chief and main media spokesperson. Assange says that Wikileaks has released more classified documents than the rest of the world press combined.

• The attention his activities have received mean Assange travels constantly and runs the site from a range of shifting, temporary locations. Those close to him say he goes for long periods without eating or sleeping.

• Wikileaks co-founder Daniel Schmitt, has described Assange as "one of the few people who really care about positive reform in this world to a level where you're willing to do something radical to risk making a mistake, just for the sake of working on something they believe in".

• Prior to the rape allegations, Wikileaks released statements saying it expected a "dirty tricks" campaign to follow the Afghan document leaks.