Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange was arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Thursday. Assange had been living in the embassy for the past seven years to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where he was once facing a sexual assault case that has since been dropped.
Before we go any further, how does one live in an embassy? I assume that the embassy functions like an office, with people in suits doing embassy stuff, and there is Assange just walking around in a robe reading the newspaper and making coffee and watching the TV really loud and not cleaning up after himself.
Here’s some important background from Vox:
Assange started WikiLeaks in 2006 with the stated goal of publishing information that 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 US’s imperialist ambitions.
He 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 US Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning and CIA hacking material.
With an outstanding arrest warrant in the United Kingdom and fearing reprisal from the US, Assange had taken refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy for the past seven years. However, his relations with the Ecuadorian government soured after a new president took power, leading to his ultimate expulsion from the embassy.
Now Assange will likely face extradition to the United States and could be looking at up to five years in prison if found guilty of charges of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, Vox reports.
Ecuador’s president said it withdrew his asylum after repeated violations of international conventions, which is really vague and sounds like someone inside the embassy got tired of Assange leaving the toilet seat up and shaving his pits with their razor.
Here are 5 fast facts so you can sound like you are smart AF:
1. Did you see his crazy white-man ZZ Top beard?
Assange looked crazy in the initial photos, which looked like he was being dragged out of bed and thrown into a waiting cop van. He also had the craziest beard, which proves my point about Assange living up in the embassy like Tom Hanks in Castaway.
Here is Assange in may of 2017 still looking like an evil computer hacker or the villain in Die Hard.
And here’s Assange after being arrested:
2017 Assange drinks tea with his pinky out.
2019 Assange wants to know who the fuck took his beer koozie!
2. About that alleged sexual assault...
Assange visited Sweden in Aug. 2010, which should have been harmless except shortly thereafter, two women accused him of sexually assaulting them. Assange was questioned and the case was closed. Then a special prosecutor reopened the case in November of that year with various charges against the Wikileaks co-founder. By this time, Assange had returned to Britain, and the prosecutor claimed the law wouldn’t allow for him to be questioned there. Assange was interviewed by officials in 2016 even though the statue of limitations had expired on most of the charges and the case was dropped in May 2017.
3. Where the hell did Pamela Anderson come from?
I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. OK, fine, you may be right, but we can’t prove it. It’s been rumored that Assange had a “love jones for her body and her skin tone,” but that was only a rumor. Anderson is deeper than the crouch on her Baywatch swimsuit, and as such she’s been to visit Assange on several occasions. The two are friends.
She also wrote this bit of freestyle poetry after his arrest:
4. Assange’s got 1 and 4 possibles.
No one knows exactly how many children Assange has. He’s got a son named Daniel that he had when he was married. But Assange would reportedly brag about the love children he had all over the globe.
“Often I sat in large groups and listened to Julian boast about how many children he had fathered in various parts of the world,” former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg wrote in his book Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website.
“He seemed to enjoy the idea of lots and lots of Julians, one on every continent.” Police documents viewed by the Daily Beast show one witness saying Assange had “at least” four children.