August 2010: The public prosecutor in Stockholm issues an arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on suspicion of sexual offenses. The Australian is accused of sexual harassment. Assange says the allegations are “baseless”. The warrant was dropped shortly thereafter.
October 2010: Wikileaks publishes 250,000 confidential diplomatic reports that get the US government into trouble.
December 2010: Assange is arrested in London because of a new arrest warrant from Sweden. Another woman from Stockholm accuses him of sexual harassment and coercion. After a week in custody, he is released on bail subject to certain conditions. Sweden demands his extradition.
February 2011: A London court granted the request for extradition. Assange is to be questioned in Sweden about the allegations. He appeals. He fears extradition to the US and charges in US courts because of the publications on Wikileaks. To date, no such charge has been brought in the United States.
May 2012: Assange is suing through two instances. The highest British court, the Supreme Court, but confirms extradition to Sweden.
June 2012: After a failed objection, Assange flees to the Ecuadorian embassy in London on June 19 and applies for political asylum there.
August 2012: Ecuador grants asylum to Assange, creating diplomatic tension with Britain. The Wikileaks founder sees himself wrongly persecuted. On August 19, he issued a statement calling for the US to end its “witch hunt” against his disclosure platform. Assange faces arrest and deportation if he leaves the embassy.
July 2013: A US military tribunal sentenced Wikileaks informant Chelsea Manning to 35 years in prison. The US soldier passed on secret documents about the Afghan war to Assange in 2010. Wikileaks published this and for the first time caused an international sensation.
July 2014: After two years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Assange applies to Sweden to have the four-year-old arrest warrant lifted. The application fails.
August 2014: At a press conference, Assange said he wanted to leave the Ecuadorian embassy “soon”.
September 2014: Assange appeals to the United Nations against Sweden and Great Britain. He is being “arbitrarily detained” because the years he has spent in the Ecuadorian embassy are tantamount to illegal detention. A UN working group on arbitrary detention is taking on his case.
August 2015: The less serious allegations of sexual harassment and coercion are statute-barred. The Stockholm Public Prosecutor’s Office does not pursue them any further. Assange continues to deny all allegations.
October 2015: The British police leave the guard outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Officials have been there since 2012 – the cost is estimated at more than £ 12 million.
February 2016: The UN Panel on Arbitrary Detention votes in Assange’s favor. According to the British broadcaster BBC, the Wikileaks founder has been “arbitrarily detained”. However, the decision of the UN body is not legally binding.
May 2017: Sweden puts all investigations against Assange on hold.
January 2018: Assange becomes an Ecuadorian citizen and receives the country’s diplomatic status. The British authorities refuse to allow him to travel to the South American country.
February 2018: The Wikileaks founder wants the British arrest warrant against him to be lifted because there is no longer any investigation against him in Sweden. The London judge rejects his application. He had violated the bail conditions in 2010 when he fled to the embassy – because of this violation he had to continue to face the British authorities.
May 2018: Ecuador finds out that Assange has hacked into secret mail correspondence with his diplomats. The new President Lenín Moreno then wants to get rid of him as soon as possible.
November 2018: It is known that the US judiciary has at least secretly prepared an indictment against Assange.
December 2018: Britain offers Assange not to extradite him to a country where the death penalty is being carried out. Nevertheless, he had to serve a prison sentence for violating his probation conditions (escaping to the embassy). Assange refuses the offer.
April 2019: President Moreno said Assange would lose his asylum status because he violated his asylum conditions. Shortly before, Wikileaks had reported on corruption investigations against Moreno in Ecuador.
April 11, 2019: The Wikileaks founder is arrested after more than six years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The US judiciary says they are bringing charges. She accuses him of conspiracy with Chelsea Manning for a hacking attack on Pentagon computers. There is a maximum penalty of five years.
May 1st, 2019: Assange is sentenced to 50 weeks in prison in London. The reason: By escaping to the Ecuadorian embassy, he had violated probation requirements.
May 9, 2019: Nils Melzer, the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, visits Assange in prison and strongly criticizes the prison conditions. In an interview with the SZ Melzer later speaks of the “psychological torture” Assange was subjected to.
May 13, 2019: The Swedish public prosecutor’s office is reopening the investigation into the Wikileaks founder, which was temporarily suspended in 2017. Some of the allegations are now statute barred, but a sexual offense can still be prosecuted by prosecutors.
May 23, 2019: The US judiciary is tightening its charges against Assange. 17 other charges are published. In addition to the conspiracy with the former US military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning for a hacker attack, he is now accused of espionage and betrayal, among other things. Theoretical maximum sentence: 175 years. Assange’s defense lawyers call the charge politically motivated and see it as an attack on freedom of the press.
June 13, 2019: The British Home Secretary Sajid Javid allows the extradition request from the USA. He formally confirmed the application, he told BBC radio. The final decision on extradition will be made by a court in early 2020. The hearing on the request is due to begin on February 25, 2020 in a British court – Assange is said to have to remain in custody until the start of the trial.
November 19, 2019: The Swedish Public Prosecutor’s Office is finally closing its preliminary investigation into the sexual offenses. The evidence is too thin to be charged.
February 24, 2020: The hearing on the U.S. judiciary’s extradition request against Assange begins. Negotiations are taking place in London as to whether it should be handed over to the USA. If the British court agrees, Assange faces 18 charges – and up to 175 years in prison. The Wikileaks founder seems unfocused at the start of the process.
March 13, 2020: Former Wikileaks informant Chelsea Manning is released from prison after just over a year in custody. Manning had refused to testify about Assange.
June 25, 2020: The U.S. judiciary is expanding the charges against Assange. The Ministry of Justice announced that there is a broader conspiracy in spying on computers than previously assumed. Accordingly, “Assange and others” recruited people to hack networks for the benefit of Wikileaks. However, no further charges would be added to the previous 18 charges against Assange; the charge would only be expanded.
September 22, 2020: The psychiatrist Michael Kopelmann testifies in court that Assange is acutely suicidal. There is a “high risk” that he wants to take his own life. The Wikileaks founder has hallucinations and hear voices.
January 4, 2021: A British court rejects the handover of Assange to the USA. The judge based her decision on Assange’s mental health and the conditions of detention that would await him in the United States. It is to be expected that he will commit suicide in solitary confinement. An appeal is considered likely.
January 6, 2021: Assange remains in custody. A court in London denies Assange’s defense a motion to bail him. There are reasons to believe that Assange would flee if released, explains the judge.
February 9, 2021: Like his predecessor Trump, the new US President Joe Biden also wants Assange to be extradited. A Justice Department spokesman said the new administration would appeal against the UK court’s decision not to transfer Assange to the US.
October 27, 2021: The legal dispute over a possible extradition of Assange to the USA goes into the second round. The US is pushing for the Wikileaks founder to be extradited so that he can try himself on charges of espionage. He faces up to 175 years in prison.
November 12, 2021: Julian Assange is allowed to marry the British lawyer Stella Moris in the maximum security prison in Belmarsh. The couple have two children. It is not known when the wedding will take place.