At Cannes, Assange wears shirt listing names of Gaza children killed by Israel

By Beril Canakci

ISTANBUL (AA) - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returned to the public eye Tuesday wearing a white T-shirt bearing the names of 4,986 Palestinian children under 5 killed in Gaza, as he walked the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival.

Assange, making his first major appearance since being released from a British prison last year, used the high-profile event to draw attention to the toll of Israel’s war on Gaza. On his back, a sign read: “Stop Israel.”

He was at Cannes to support The Six Billion Dollar Man, a new documentary about his life directed by American filmmaker Eugene Jarecki.

The film, a recent Golden Globe winner, charts WikiLeaks’ explosive releases of classified documents, the years of political fallout, and the international campaign that led to Assange’s release in 2024.

His appearance came nearly a year after he left London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison under a plea deal with the US government. Assange had spent five years in prison fighting extradition and another seven holed up inside Ecuador’s Embassy in London seeking asylum.