How self-imposed exile changed Julian Assange:

Watching the video of his arrest earlier, I was shocked to see how much Assange has aged. His tall frame bent over by the police dragging him out.  He looked desperate and cornered. He was not the confident, daring -- and often calculating -- transparency activist I once knew.

The last time I saw Assange was just after he claimed asylum in the embassy, nearly seven years ago. He was in good health then and fairly optimistic that he could still run WikiLeaks from the embassy. 

He told me it was like living on a space ship. His friends worried about his health and bought him an exercise machine. Celebrity guests would sometimes visit and that would make a big splash in the news. But it was a lonely existence, and friends brought him a kitten to keep him company.  

And then there was the 24-hour police surveillance outside the embassy. I cannot fathom the toll it must have had on his physical and mental health. 

Assange had always maintained that he was not afraid of facing allegations of sexual assault in Sweden, which is what the original arrest warrant was for. He was more concerned that it was a ploy -- he called it once a "honey trap" -- to get him extradited to the US on charges of espionage. 

Remember that -- before the DNC leaks, before allegations of Russia collusion, before Trump’s declarations of "I love WikiLeaks!" -- Assange and WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of classified documents leaked to him by former Army private and whistleblower, Chelsea Manning. 

That was unprecedented. It made WikiLeaks what it is today. And Assange was convinced that the US government was coming after him, that a grand jury had issued a sealed indictment charging him with criminal acts. 

Today, it seems, Assange was right. 

An Interpol "red notice" issued by the US Department of Homeland Security in the name of Julian Assange has been in circulation since at least March 2011, according to a diplomatic source with first-hand knowledge of the document.

The source said the red notice did not mention any charges in particular at the time.

What is a red notice? It is a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action, according to Interpol. It is not an arrest warrant.

Back inside the courtroom, one of Assange's lawyers argued that he did not surrender for bail back in 2012 because he would never have received a fair trial and was thus forced to seek asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy.

The judge appeared to dispute this and called the Australian WikiLeaks founder a “narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest.”

The judge found Assange guilty of breaking his bail conditions and ordered him to appear on May 2 for an extradition hearing. Until then, he said Assange would remain in custody.

The hearing has now ended.

When 47-year-old WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange finally left the Ecuadorian embassy after seven years, the focus was largely on his appearance and what he was screaming as he was bundled into a police van.

But eagle-eyed observers noticed that as he was hauled away, he was clutching a book titled "Gore Vidal: History of the National Security State." According to the Amazon listing, it's a collection of interviews with the American literary legend, who chronicled major cultural shifts in the United States.

The book, according to Amazon, details "the historical events that led to the establishment of the massive military-industrial-security complex and the political culture that gave us the 'Imperial Presidency.'”

When Assange sat down in a London court in the past hour or so, he still had the book with him, and made a show to the media of reading from it.

Assange has appeared inside the courtroom at London's Westminster Magistrates Court. Wearing a dark suit with his hair tied back and crisp white beard, he gave a thumbs up to the press.

He appeared calm and confident as the judge asked him where his lawyers were.

The US Department of Justice has confirmed Julian Assange has been indicted on conspiracy with Chelsea Manning to commit computer intrusion in 2010.

“The indictment alleges that in March 2010, Assange engaged in a conspiracy with Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst in the US Army, to assist Manning in cracking a password” on classified DoD [US Department of Defense] computer systems, according to a Justice Department press release. 

The indictment -- unsealed Thursday -- was signed last year on March 6.

Earlier Manning's lawyer expressed hope that Assange's arrest on Thursday in London could open the door to Manning's release from incarceration.

Moira Meltzer-Cohen, an attorney for Chelsea Manning, said: “Were he to be extradited [to the US] we hope it would signal her release but that is not, unfortunately, a foregone conclusion.”

Manning served about seven years in prison for her disclosure of US military and diplomatic secrets to WikiLeaks in 2010, before being released in May 2017.

But Manning was jailed again in early March of this year, when a judge held her in contempt for refusing to testify before a grand jury about those disclosures.

Her testimony appeared to be part of an effort by federal prosecutors investigating Assange.

This post has been updated to correct the date the indictment was signed.

While we wait for proceedings to get underway at Westminster Magistrates Court, over at the UK House of Commons, British Prime Minister Theresa May has opened her appearance by welcoming the arrest of Julian Assange.

She said that he was “arrested for breach of bail after nearly seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy. He has also been arrested in relation to an extradition request from the US.”

“I would like to thank the Metropolitan Police for carrying out their duties with great professionalism and to welcome the cooperation of the Ecuadorian government in bringing this matter to a resolution. Mr Speaker this goes to show in the UK, no one is above the law,” the Prime Minister said.

Julian Assange has arrived at Westminster Magistrates Court, a CNN producer at the court has confirmed. He is now inside the building but the courtroom is yet to open.

His lawyers will be Liam Walker (for the breach of bail charges) and Ben Cooper (for the US extradition request), the law firm Doughty Street Chambers tweeted. Jennifer Robinson will also appear with him, they said.

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Thursday that Julian Assange is “not above the law” and that he is “no hero.”

“What we’ve shown today is that no one is above the law. Julian Assange is no hero. He has hidden from the truth for years and years and it is right that his future should be decided in the British judicial system,” Hunt said.

He praised Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno’s “very courageous decision … to resolve this situation that has been going on for nearly seven years.”

And he challenged Assange’s long-standing claim that he was being held in the embassy against his will, saying: “I mean it’s not so much Julian Assange being held hostage in the Ecuadorian Embassy, it’s actually Julian Assange holding the Ecuadorian Embassy hostage in a situation that was absolutely intolerable for them.”