 London police have arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange here. The police have arrested the founder of the WikiLeaks website, Julian Assange, and removed him from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. All right, almost seven years standoff, holding international law enforcement at bay. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is under arrest. Police. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, a journalist, has been in jail for over 1,000 days. The US has been trying to extradite him to face charges under the Espionage Act. However, his true crime is journalism and speaking the truth. His true crime is exposing US war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the world. Julian Assange has been in jail since 2019, but his persecution began much earlier, almost a decade ago. Through most of this time, the media has failed to report on this attack on the press, instead giving a lot of credence to the US campaign against him. This continued through the last year, as British judges heard the plea to extradite Assange to the US. Even after his extradition trial began, much of the focus of coverage has been on legal proceedings and updates, which often miss the larger and most sustained attack on Assange and journalism. So today, we bring you four key developments from outside the courtroom, which really blow the cover of this attempt to persecute Assange. Yahoo News published a report last year, which revealed serious debates at the topmost levels of the US government to either kidnap or kill Assange in 2017. Yes, you heard that right. Kidnap or kill Julian Assange, a journalist. This was after the publication of the Walt Seven Files. The Walt Seven Files, published by WikiLeaks, exposed the Central Intelligence Agency's secret projects and hacking tools. Now, as we know, there's nothing the CIA hates more than being exposed. And reportedly, the CIA leadership was embarrassed and wanted vengeance on Assange. Under director Mike Pompeo, they drew out plans to not just assassinate Assange, but other WikiLeaks staff in Europe. Fortunately, fearing potential diplomatic tensions with European allies, and remember that, it's due to diplomatic tensions. They never acted on these plans. Instead, they decided to indict him, which is what resulted in the ongoing extradition process. The single most important plank of the US campaign has been to portray Julian Assange as a spy and a hacker, as opposed to a journalist and a publisher. A key component in this narrative is the testimony of Icelandic hacker Siggy Thorarsson, which was obtained during the time of the Obama administration. However, there's a glitch. Last year, Thorarsson, in an interview, admitted that he had fabricated the testimony. He apparently falsely claimed to have conducted hacking at the behest of Julian Assange in 2010 and 11. In court documents presented by the US, he's mentioned as a teenager, whom Assange is supposedly encouraged to hack local banks and government officials. It turns out that he was only remotely associated with the fundraiser for WikiLeaks between 2010 and 2011, from which he embezzled almost US dollars 50,000. It was to avoid prosecution for embezzlement and other crimes, that Thorarsson contacted the US embassy and volunteered to be a witness. He was shortly contacted by the FBI and flown out of Iceland. The sordid tale of this Icelandic hacker does not end there. In 2011, a DDoS attack by hacktivist group LULSEK affected several Icelandic government websites. The expose on Thorarsson's testimony also detailed how the DDoS attack was exploited by the FBI to fly him out of Iceland and acquire his testimony. According to reports, the FBI was able to not only enter Iceland but hold multiple meetings with Thorarsson and then fly him out of the country as a witness. Even though the Obama administration decided against a full-fledged indictment, it is this proactive pursuit that enabled the Trump administration's legal assault on Assange. From 2012 till his arrest in 2019, Julian Assange was confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London. In April 2019, WikiLeaks had reported extensive surveillance operations on Assange within the embassy. This was confirmed months later when Spain's High Court carried out a secret investigation prompted by a complaint by Assange himself. The investigation found that a Spanish security company, UC Global, which worked for the Ecuadorian embassy at the time, had illegally compiled surveillance footage, audio and video recordings, personal information and even private legal documents of Assange from the embassy. It turned out that this was, of course, being done for the CIA since at least mid-2017, when the organization was debating assassination plans for Assange. Now, according to many experts, these facts should have been considered by the British judges who heard the extradition pleas. They weren't. Why that is? We'll leave it to you to conclude. It's incredibly unfair that, during this whole process, Julian Assange has committed no crime, is charged with no crime, is a remand prisoner. The New York Times, The Washington Post had no problem publishing and commercializing and commodifying what Julian made available. And we don't hear anything from them now. Assange is absolutely vital to the survival of this planet. That's it. And that's enough for me that these are sorts to destroy the planet. And Assange is a very important part of how to stop them. So that's why they're locking him up.