How long is Julian Assange going to prison for, why was he arrested, and did the WikiLeaks founder have a panic button at the Ecuador embassy?

It's the first time in US history that anyone operating in a journalistic capacity has been charged under the act.

The Ecuadorian authorities stated that Assange could remain in their embassy as long as he wished.

In 2018, Ecuador closed off Assange's communications with the outside world after the Australian breached an agreement he had made with the South American country a year earlier.

Its government said Assange's behaviour online risked jeopardising the nation's relationship with the UK.

On July 27, it was reported that Ecuador's president said Assange must eventually leave the embassy.

Then in April 2019, Ecuador's new president Lenin Moreno said the country was withdrawing Assange's diplomatic immunity, meaning police were free to enter the embassy and arrest him.

On April 11, he was arrested by Met Police for "failing to surrender to the court".

Since his arrest, Moreno has accused Assange of hosting numerous hackers at the embassy to give them directions on how to propagate information on topics important to him, and his financiers.

Ecuador has also revealed that it spent £5million keeping him holed up in London for seven years.

How long was he jailed for?

The raft of new charges are in addition to an initial indictment accusing him of conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

This latest charge says Assange conspired with Manning to obtain and disclose classified national defence documents in 2010.

On May 1, 2019, Assange was jailed for 50 weeks for hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy and jumping bail.

The 47-year-old "apologised unreservedly" claiming he feared he would be "kidnapped" by the US because of his works with the whistle-blower website.

But Assange was jailed for close to the maximum one-year sentence as the judge told him he still "had a choice" and put himself deliberately out of reach of the law.

Assange's lawyers today told Southwark Crown Court that he had been consumed by fears he would be kidnapped and "forcibly taken" to the US, which had indicted him over leaking of information with intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

Assange’s defence lawyer Mark Summers QC, said: "As threats rained down on him from America, they overshadowed everything as far as he was concerned.

"They dominated his thoughts. They were not invented by him, they were gripping him throughout."

Mr Summers said Assange's fears that he could face extradition from Sweden to the US were well founded and "not a figment of his imagination".

Sweden at the time, he said, had a "well documented and unfortunate history" of sending "people to states where they were at significant risk of ill treatment including torture and death".

Will Assange be extradited?

British Home Secretary Sajid Javid says he has signed an extradition order that would send imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States if British courts favor the move.

Javid told BBC radio yesterday that courts will decide whether Assange must face espionage charges in the US.

Assange is scheduled to face an extradition hearing Friday on the US request. A decision is likely months away.

He is serving a 50-week sentence in London's Belmarsh Prison for jumping bail in Britain.

The 47-year-old was too ill to take part in a recent hearing.

He is expected to participate in Friday's proceeding via video link.

The US plan to prosecute him for espionage has raised free speech issues.

Assange asserts he is a journalist shielded by the First Amendment.

But a British court ruled on June 3, 2019 Assange cannot be extradited to Sweden to face rape charges.

The ruling doesn't mean a preliminary investigation in Sweden is to be abandoned, only that the 47-year-old Assange shouldn't be extradited and could be questioned in Britain.

Eva-Marie Persson, Sweden's deputy director of public prosecutions, said she still wants to speak to him, though she hasn't picked a possible date for the questioning in the UK.

"I will also issue a European Investigation Order in order to interview Julian Assange," said Persson said.

But Assange's lawyer Per Samuelson argued that Assange's imprisonment in Britain meant there was no flight risk.

"He is in prison for half a year at least, and he is detained on behalf of the United States," he told the court.
"So there is no point detaining him in Sweden, too."

In April, Assange was evicted from the Ecuadorian Embassy in Londonwhere he had been holed up claiming political asylum since 2012.

Assange was then immediately arrested by British police on April 11 and is currently serving a 50-week sentence in Britain for jumping bail in 2012.

He is also fighting extradition to the US but missed a court hearing last week, reportedly due to ill health.

Did the WikiLeaks founder have a panic button at the Ecuador Embassy?

Assange was arrested in a way that ensured he wouldn't be able to press a mysterious panic button he claimed would have “devastating consequences” to the Ecuadorean embassy.

It has been revealed that his swift arrest was designed to stop him pressing an emergency panic button.

Ecuador's foreign minister Jose Valencia said audio recordings from a few months ago captured Assange threatening ambassador Jaime Merchan with pressing the button which would have "devastating consequences" for the embassy if he was arrested.

British authorities were told about the threat — which cops acted on by not allowing Assange to return to his room in the embassy during his arrest to carry out any secret plans.

But it's not yet clear what was meant by the panic button threat.

A previous version of this story said that Assange had sex with two men who later accused him of rape. In actual fact they were women. The story was corrected on March 10, 2016.