Julian Assange's seven-year asylum at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London came to an end with his arrest by British police in April. He had been seeking refuge from prosecution in Sweden and the United States, and the British government has now ordered that he be extradited to the US, where he may be charged under the Espionage Act.

As WikiLeaks' co-founder and chief disseminator, Assange came under scrutiny in 2010 for publishing 250,000 classified American papers related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, including information on an arguably indiscriminate airstrike by the US military that became known as the "Collateral Murder video". WikiLeaks' notoriety continued to grow after it leaked private papers from Mrs Hillary Clinton's 2016 US presidential campaign with the aid of the Russians.