Julian Assange is fighting extradition to the US. Here's what you ...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will attempt a last-ditch legal challenge this week to stop his extradition from Britain to the United States, in what his wife has described as a matter of life or death.

The 52-year-old is wanted in the US for espionage and faces 18 charges related to the publication of a range of highly classified information relating to the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Australian hacker has seemingly exhausted his legal challenges, with London's High Court to hold hearings over the next two days into whether Assange can appeal his extradition.

Assange has been held in London's maximum-security Belmarsh prison since 2019 and potentially faces up to 175 years in prison.

Here's what you need to know about Assange's case and how the years-long legal saga has evolved.

You can also tap the links below to jump to certain points.

Who is Julian Assange? What is WikiLeaks?What did WikiLeaks reveal?Why was Julian Assange arrested?What happened to the sexual assault allegations?Where is Julian Assange now?What is Julian Assange accused of?What do we know about the extradition order?What has the Australian government said?What has Julian Assange's team said?Who is Julian Assange? What is WikiLeaks?

Julian Assange was born in Townsville, Queensland, in 1971 and spent his teenage years becoming a skilled computer programmer.

Assange created the web platform WikiLeaks in 2006, a media organisation that specialised in the publication of censored or restricted material involving war, spying and corruption.

Julian Assange holds up a copy of the Guardian during a press conference in 2010.(Reuters: Andrew Winning)

WikiLeaks would go on to publish over 10 million documents, according to its website.

In an interview with German news website Der Spiegel in 2015, Assange described WikiLeaks as "a giant library of the world's most persecuted documents".

WikiLeaks and its journalists won plenty of accolades including Australia's top journalism prize, the Walkley Award for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism, in 2011.

WikiLeaks hasn't published anything new since 2021.

Assange told The Nation in an interview last month his imprisonment and the US government's surveillance of funding warded off potential whistleblowers.

What did WikiLeaks reveal?

WikiLeaks made international headlines in April 2010 when it published a classified US military video showing an Apache attack helicopter gunning down 11 civilians, including two Reuters journalists, on a street in Baghdad in 2007.

The video WikiLeaks dubbed "Collateral Murder" showed a US helicopter shooting at civilians in Iraq.(Youtube: sunshinepress)

Later that year, WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of US military messages and cables, a leak that saw former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning jailed.

The then-Obama administration denounced the leak, with Hillary Clinton (then the secretary of state) saying the US "deeply regrets" the embarrassing release of more than 250,000 state department cables.

At the time, Ms Clinton said there was "nothing brave about sabotaging the peaceful relations between nations".

Why was Julian Assange arrested?

At the end of 2010, only months after the release of US diplomatic cables, Assange was arrested in the United Kingdom over a rape allegation in Sweden, which he denies.

At the time, the police statement read: "[Assange] is accused by the Swedish authorities of one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape, all alleged to have been committed in August 2010."

Two years later the UK's Supreme Court ruled Assange should be extradited to Sweden to face questioning but the following month he entered Ecuador's embassy in London and was granted asylum – he would go on to stay there for seven years.

Assange speaks to the media outside the Ecuador embassy in west London in 2012.(Reuters: Olivia Harris)

Assange has always denied the allegations, saying they were part of a US plot to discredit him and eventually extradite him to the US.

He remained holed up in the embassy for seven years until April 2019, when the Ecuadorian government withdrew his asylum and Metropolitan Police officers arrested him for failing to surrender to the court over the arrest warrant issued in 2012.

What happened to the sexual assault allegations?

It took Swedish investigators six years to finally question Julian Assange over the sexual assault allegations, in which three allegations expired due to the statute of limitations.

In 2010, the prosecutor in charge of the case, Marianne Ny, said Swedish law prevented her from questioning anyone via video link or in the London embassy.

She later said it was legally possible, but said questioning Assange over video "would lower the quality of the interview".

In 2015 Ms Ny said she was willing to interrogate Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, but the process was then held up further due to bureaucratic and diplomatic delays.

In 2019 the Swedish Prosecution Authority dropped the rape investigation into Assange, saying the corroborating evidence had weakened considerably "due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question".

Where is Julian Assange now?

Assange spent seven years holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London before he was physically dragged out and jailed in 2019 for breaching bail conditions.

He has been held in the Belmarsh maximum-security prison in London ever since while his extradition case is decided.

In March 2022 Assange married his partner Stella Morris inside Belmarsh prison.

The pair met in 2015 and conceived two children in secret while Assange was in the Ecuadorian embassy.

"The prison – normally filled with tragedy and isolation – was turned on its head for a few hours to celebrate our love and commitment," Ms Assange wrote in an opinion piece for ABC News later that year.

What is Julian Assange accused of?

In May 2019 the US Justice Department brought 18 charges against Julian Assange: 17 charges relating to obtaining and disclosing classified information, and one charge concerning an alleged conspiracy to crack passwords on government servers.

The US alleges he conspired with Chelsea Manning to hack into US military computers to acquire the classified information published by WikiLeaks.

Julian Assange has amassed supporters during his years-long legal saga.(Reuters: Toby Melville)

The US says by releasing the documents and files Assange endangered lives, damaged national security and aided its adversaries.

Assange maintains the information exposed abuses by the US military and that he was acting as a journalist and is therefore entitled to protection by the US's First Amendment.

What do we know about the extradition order?

In June 2022, the British government approved Assange's extradition to the United States after he fought for years to stay in the United Kingdom.

(Hearings into his extradition actually began two years earlier in February of 2020, but were subsequently delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)

At this point, the US had been trying for more than a decade to put the Australian on trial over the publication of classified documents.

Julian Assange leaves Westminster Magistrates Court in London in 2020.(Reuters: Simon Dawson)

In 2021, the judge in the case concluded that it would be "oppressive" to extradite him to the US because of his frail mental health, saying there was a real risk that he would take his own life.

However, that decision was overturned on an appeal after the United States gave a package of assurances, including a pledge Assange could be transferred to Australia to serve any sentence.

The High Court rejected Assange's extradition appeal in June 2023, leaving him "dangerously close" to being extradited to the US, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Assange is now contesting the ruling, making it his last legal option in the UK in his long-running legal saga.

What has the Australian government said?

In September last year, an unlikely coalition of Australian parliamentarians headed to Washington to lobby US decision-makers to drop the legal pursuit of Julian Assange and grant his freedom by Christmas.

"We didn't come here to pick a fight, we came here to get a resolution," former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce said.

The cross-party delegation included former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce and independent MP Monique Ryan.(ABC News: Bradley McLennan)

Just last week Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and other federal MPs voted in favour of a motion urging the United States and the United Kingdom to end the prosecution of Assange and allow his return to Australia.

"It has been too long and, in my view, as I've said before, I see nothing is served from the further incarceration of Mr Assange," Mr Albanese said in May last year.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie successfully moved the motion with 86 votes in favour and 42 against – Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and the Coalition voted against the motion.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie is in London for the hearing.(ABC News: Nick Haggarty)

Mr Wilkie, who is set to be at the hearing in London, told the parliament: "We have just about run out of time to save Julian Assange."

"There are people who loathe the man, there are people who worship the man … but just about everyone agrees that this has gone on too long, but it must be brought to an end," Mr Wilkie said.

"Regardless of what you think of Mr Assange, justice is not being done in this case.

"If Mr Assange is extradited to the US, it would be a direct attack on media freedom, as it would set a frightening precedent for all journalists that they, too, are at risk of being locked up just for doing their job."

What has Julian Assange's team said?

Last month Assange's lawyer warned the WikiLeaks founder is at risk of suicide if London's High Court rejects his final appeal against extradition to the US.

International human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson says her client is so unwell mentally that he would be unlikely to survive extradition if the High Court does not rule in his favour.

Human Rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson says Julian Assange is mentally unwell.(AAP: Mick Tsikas)

Stella Assange also fears for her husband's life if he is extradited to the US, calling the two-day hearing in London's High Court a matter of life and death.

"His life is at risk every single day he stays in prison – and if he is extradited he will die," Ms Assange told a media briefing last Thursday.

When speaking to the ABC's Europe bureau chief Steve Cannane, Ms Assange did not accept the previous assurances from the US that Julian would be safe.

"These are not assurances, in fact they are a licence to torture Julian," Ms Assange said.

"In fact, it doesn't stop the US from doing anything, it in fact says the US can choose to torture Julian if they deem it necessary at a later point.

"It is anything but a guarantee, it is just a fig leaf to be able to torture Julian once he's extradited."

Ms Assange told ABC News that the Australian government's backing of Assange's case "means everything".

"In a political case if you don't have the backing of your own country, your own government, you're done for."

ABC/wires