WIKILEAKS FOUNDER JULIAN ASSANGE made a surprise comeback on social media in the later hours of September 17, 2026, after vanishing from social media for about two years since June 2024. He was released from prison in June 2024 after he pleaded guilty to the charges of releasing sensitive State information being slapped by the United States (US) Government.
It was Julian’s personal X account—then twitter—that was at the centre of his advocacy on free speech and information access. The last post from his account was an article on the ‘plea deal’ between him and the US government posted on June 28, 2024.
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Two years later, the Australian data programmer and information activist posted a photo from his official X account, standing at Sydney’s iconic George Street, with the caption “I’m back,” and the netizens, media houses, political commentators have not stopped talking about it since then.
Assange’s X account was not banned or subjected to any legal-judicial restrictions. After his release from the Belmarsh High Security Prison, London, on June 24, 2024, he stayed away from social media and public attention.
But this was, of course, not the first time Assange’s X (then Twitter) account vanished from twitter or endured such irregularities. On the Christmas Eve of 2017, Assange’s X account had briefly vanished from the social media platform. Netizens, his supporters, and other critical observers still remember the message, "Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!” being displayed on the platform from around 8pm EDT on December 24, 2017.
Assange’s active participation in the global political discourse of information, security and human rights was marked by a 14-year-long tussle between various state actors, ranging from Sweden, Britain and finally the US. He founded WikiLeaks in 2006, and began publishing certain classified and sensitive documents that attest to various human rights violations and armed excesses committed by the US in Iraq, and Afghanistan, among others.
The legal and judicial battle went on for long, and Assange continuously refused to give in. It was ultimately in June 2024, that Assange signed a plea deal with the US Department of Justice, and pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to obtain and disclose national defence information. He was handed a 62-month prison sentence, which was already served by him in those years. Thereby, Assange finally walked out of jail as a free man on June 24, 2026.
After his release, Assange moved back to Australia to his family. He arrived at the Canberra airport on the evening of June 26, 2024. After all these years, Assange had wished to get back to his family—his wife, his father and the two kids. “Julian wanted me to sincerely thank everyone. He wanted to be here, but you have to understand what he’s been through. He needs time. He needs to recuperate and this is a process,” said Stella Assange—Julian’s wife—to the reporters in 2024. Since then Assange has been off the political and digital radar. His wife, Stella Assange’s X account suggested that they attended the Cannes Film Festival for the premier of the documentary “The Six Billion Dollar Man,” a film based on his life, or advocating his book, “When Google Met WikiLeaks” published in 2014. However, much remains unknown about Assange’s activities in his two-year Australian hibernation.
However, with the ‘comeback’ tweet on X, on September 18, 2026, the social media has been flooded with acknowledgements and appreciations for Assange. Stella Assange’s tweet , “Julian’s official account @JulianAssange is back ! More news next week!” has further raised speculations among the netizens.
Responding to a tweet by Polymarket, Julian Assange wrote today that he did not return to X after a two-year hiatus. In fact, since 2018, Assange’s account has been run by his Defense Campaign (@DefendAssange).
It was a video document named “Collatarel Murder” published from the WikiLeaks You tube Channel that gained massive viewership and became a major point of discussion. The Video showed footage of a US Apache helicopter attack, which reportedly killed 18 people, including two Reuters News Staff.
The World went crazy. Televisions began to telecast the footage. Almost every corner of the world gained access to the claims of human rights violations and military excesses by the US. Hilary Clinton—the then US Secretary of State—publicly announced that this was an attack on the United States, declaring that “aggressive steps” would be taken against such ‘illegal acts.’
Julian formed WikiLeaks in 2006, and began to publish classified and sensitive documents regarding various excesses committed by different countries. But the real havoc was wrecked in 2010, when WikiLeaks began to release hundreds of thousands of classified documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were operating from a small bunker in Iceland, with the fear of being apprehended by the intelligence services.
It was another whistleblower, Chelsea Manning—US Army intelligence analyst, then known as Bradley Manning—who provided the documents to WikiLeaks. Of these, a video named, “Collateral Murder” gained major public attention. Chelsea Manning was immediately arrested, and tried for espionage, while Assange began to travel around the world attending conferences and detailing their claims.
It was in a conference in Sweden, August 2010, that landed him in a trail against the accusations of sexual harassment by two of his former aides. In December 2010, Assange surrendered to the police in London after the Swedish official issued an arrest warrant. The case continued, while Assange was released on bail, and a future extradition hearing breathed down his neck. In February 2011, a British magistrates’ court ordered his extradition to Sweden.
Following this, he took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and appealed for political asylum. Assange was granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government, allowing him to legally reside at their London embassy. In the meantime, Chelsea Manning was convicted by the court, and was sentenced to 35 years in prison, while Assange’s appeal to dismiss arrests was repeatedly rejected by the Swedish authorities.
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Time passed by, and in 2017, the then President Barack Obama reduced the prison sentence of Manning to seven years, leading to her release on May 17, 2017. Simultaneously, Swedish authorities also dropped the rape and molestation charges against Assange in the same month.
Things got intense in April 2019, when the British authorities arrested Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and was sent to 50 weeks in prison. Things were not smoothly sailing for Assange, and the US prosecutors launched an indictment against him for what they claimed to be “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.” In June 2019, the US authorities began to press for Assange’s extradition to the US, which was blocked by a British Judge named Vanessa Baraitser, citing the worsening mental toll Assange would face, and was released from prison in January 2021.
But the process of appealing and counter appealing continued between the US official and the British courts, with the British government ordering Assange’s extradition to the US in June 2022. The Australian government under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stepped in to Assange’s rescue, asking for the immediate ceasement of US efforts to prosecute Assange. This tussle continued for a year or so, and in February 2024, the British High Court ruled that Assange can appeal his extradition to the US, based on the concerns on free-speech protections. Finally, on June 24, 2026, Assange pled guilty to a single count of felony related to conspiracy and unlawfully obtaining classified information.
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