Who Is Julian Assange? A Look at the WikiLeaks Founder

The deal ends a period of confinement that lasted about a dozen years, first in the self-exile of the Ecuadorean embassy in London, then in prison.

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Julian Assange in London in 2011. He is expected to plead guilty early Wednesday to a single count of illegally obtaining and disseminating national security information.

Julian Assange spent his youth in Australia during the 1980s in a state of chaotic, perpetual motion. He moved more than two dozen times, bounced from school to school, and was thrust, for a time, into what he called a New Age cult, before settling in Melbourne.

It was there, at age 16, he adopted a calling: hacking. It would eventually place him on the edge of global disruption in an era of backlash against the national security and political establishments.

This week, Mr. Assange, the 52-year-old founder of WikiLeaks, boarded a private jet from London for the long flight to a U.S. courtroom in Saipan. He is expected to plead guilty early Wednesday to a single count of illegally obtaining and disseminating national security information.

Mr. Assange will return to Australia.

Mr. Assange is expected to be freed immediately, after the U.S. Justice Department agreed to accept the five years he has already served at Belmarsh prison in Britain. He will then fly back to Australia, his wife has said.

There is at least one more debt to pay: $520,000 to the Australian government for the chartered flight home, which he hopes to raise through crowdsourcing.

It is unclear what Mr. Assange, who had bouts of depression and a small stroke during his imprisonment, will do next.

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