Assange in numbers: Key figures in WikiLeaks saga

Agence France-Presse

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Assange in numbers: Key figures in WikiLeaks saga
Numbers play a vital part in the world of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London

LONDON, United Kingdom – Numbers play a vital part in Julian Assange’s world of digital activism and the saga of his three and a half years of self-imposed confinement in Ecuador’s embassy in London. (READ: WikiLeaks founder Assange should walk free – UN panel)

Here are some key figures in the Assange story:

1,326: The number of days Assange has been inside the embassy – an apartment in a red-brick mansion block in the luxury Knightsbridge area in central London near the famous Harrods department store.

He entered the embassy on June 19, 2012 after exhausting all his legal options in Britain against extradition to Sweden over alleged sex crimes.

“I can confirm that today I arrived at the Ecuadorian embassy and sought diplomatic sanctuary and political asylum,” he said in a statement on that day.

8.5 million: The number of documents released by WikiLeaks, according to the organization, which was founded by computer hacker Assange in 2006.

The group hit the headlines in April 2010 with the release of footage showing a US helicopter shooting civilians and two Reuters staff in Iraq.

Some 77,000 secret US files on Afghanistan went online in July, followed by 400,000 so-called “Iraq war logs” in October.

The next month, the website caused its biggest shockwaves to date by beginning to publish more than 250,000 diplomatic cables from 274 US embassies.

195 square feet (18 square meters): The reported surface area of the embassy room which Assange has divided into an office and a living area.

The room contains a bed, computer, sun lamp, treadmill, and the embassy has a small balcony which Assange only very rarely uses because he has said he fears for his personal safety.

35 years: The prison sentence for US Army soldier Chelsea Manning, the main source of the leaked military and diplomatic cables who is now in a military prison in the US state of Kansas.

Manning, an intelligence analyst at the time, reportedly downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents onto a CD disk marked “Lady Gaga”.

Manning, whose birth name was Bradley, was sentenced in August 2013 under the Espionage Act with the possibility of parole in the eighth year of her imprisonment. She has been branded a traitor by critics and an icon by transparency activists.

£14 million (18 million euros, $20 million): The amount spent by British police to keep a 24-hour watch outside the embassy building, according to WikiLeaks on a website set up to draw attention to the costs.

The round-the-clock monitoring was only downgraded in October last year, with London’s Metropolitan Police saying it was “no longer proportionate”.

The police said it would instead implement a “covert” approach for arresting Assange if he stepped onto British soil, saying it was “committed to executing the arrest warrant” for a Swedish rape accusation.

2: The number of films made about WikiLeaks: the US documentary “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks” and “The Fifth Estate,” a movie starring British actor Benedict Cumberbatch as Assange.

The two reportedly communicated by email during filming and Cumberbatch said of Assange: “No matter how you cut it, he’s done us a massive service, to wake us up to the zombie-like way we absorb our news.” – Rappler.com

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