According to ABC News Australia, controversial Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has decided to run for a seat in Australia's Upper House. Not only does Assange aspire to become a political figure himself, but Wikileaks also claims to have its own candidate who will be running against incumbent Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.
"The name of the Lalor candidate and the state Julian will run for will be announced at the appropriate time," the organization said.
To make matters more complex though, Assange is currently on bail awaiting a decision by the British Supreme Court regarding his extradition to Sweden. Assange faces allegations of rape and assault from 2010. The Wikileaks founder has vehemently denied the sex-crime accusations, however, Assange claims such an extradition would pave the road to facing U.S. charges of espionage. Expectations of such charges stem from thousands upon thousands of sensitive military documents which were publicly exposed through Wikileaks' website.
Despite being detained under house arrest in England and awaiting extradition, Wikileaks says it has discovered that Assange can still run for the Upper House. The organization went on to confirm that Assange has decided to run. However, it was not made clear what legal loophole, if any, allows an individual in Assange's predicament to run as senator.
In 2011, Wikileaks had leaked hundreds of thousands of confidential, Internationally-sensitive diplomatic documents. To the embarrassment of Australian officials, a list of suspected Australian terrorists was discovered in the enormous cache of secretive documents.
Subsequently, Australian officials investigated whether or not Wikileaks had violated federal law. Federal police determined Wikileaks was safe as the incident was outside of the country's jurisdiction. However, the Prime Minster condemned the action as "grossly irresponsible".
