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Julian Assange

Julian Assange divides opinion – some see him as an advocate of transparency, others as a terrorist. The reports published by WikiLeaks, created by Assange in 2006 and specialising in leaking government documents, have made him an enemy of the US government. In its War Logs, comprising hundreds of thousands of US documents about Afghanistan and the war in Iraq, WikiLeaks discloses human rights abuses by the US army under the Bush administration. Among them are photos of the deaths of two Reuters journalists killed by US troops in Kabul. In forcing governments to face their responsibilities by publishing such embarrassing information, Assange has become a symbolic victim of a system that too easily confuses journalism with terrorism. Holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London since August 2012, Assange says he believes in the transparency of the state but not in the transparency of individuals.

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