Julian Assange: Six things you should know about the Wikileaks founder

1. The taxpayer has spent £6.5m on police officers stationed outside the Ecuadorian embassy during his two-year stay, to arrest him should he try to leave.

 

2. Assange has guest starred on the The Simpsons and had his own talk show on Russia Today. He was also visited by Lady Gaga while he was at the embassy.

 

3. His first run in with the law came in 1991 when he was discovered hacking into Canadian telecoms firm Nortel. He was eventually charged with 31 counts of hacking and related crimes and in 1996 pleaded guilty to 25 of those charges. He was fined A$2, 100 and released on a good behaviour bond.

 

4. Assange has been the subject of three films – an Australian TV film drama called Underground: The Julian Assange Story; The Fifth Estate, starring Benedict Cumberbatch; and documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks. Assange has openly criticised the latter two.

 

5. Supporters have included Jemima Khan, Ken Loach and Michael Moore, though Khan reportedly felt “alienated” by his rejection of We Steal Secrets, on which she was the executive producer.

 

6. Assange signed publishing deals worth at least $1.3m (£780,000) in 2010 as he faced allegations of rape and sexual molestation. He is reported to have said: “I don't want to write this book but I have to”, as he was using the cash to “defend myself and keep Wikileaks afloat”.