Juan Branco | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Branco in 2019 | |
| Born | 1989 (age 34–35) |
| Nationality | French, Spanish |
| Education | École normale supérieure (Paris) (PhD) Sciences Po Paris Paris Sorbonne University Panthéon-Sorbonne University |
| Occupation(s) | Lawyer, political activist, writer |
| Employer | WikiLeaks (2015–2019) |
| Notable work | Crépuscule |
| Political party | The Greens (France) (2008) Socialist Party (France) (2012) La France Insoumise (2017) |
| Movement | Yellow Vests Movement (since 2018) |
| Father | Paulo Branco |
| Website | https://juan-branco.fr |
Juan Branco (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈxwan ˈbɾaŋko], French: [bʁɑ̃ko], born 1989) is a French and Spanish lawyer, political activist, and writer.
Branco was born in Spain and grew up in Paris. While a student at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po), he stood for the Green Party in local elections. He then worked on the 2012 presidential election campaign of Socialist Party's candidate, François Hollande. After that, he completed his master's degrees followed by his PhD in 2014, and became a legal advisor of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange between 2015 and 2019. During this period, he also stood unsuccessfully in the 2017 French legislative election as a candidate for the left wing populist party La France Insoumise. In 2018 he became involved with the Yellow vests movement, some of whose members he defended in court pro bono.
Branco has published thirteen books, the most successful of which is Crépuscule (2019). Selling more than 150,000 copies within a year of publication, the work is a polemic against the links that, according to the author, unite business, media and political leaders in France.
He has courted controversy for his involvement with the Russian performance artist Petr Pavlensky in the Griveaux affair in 2020.
In July 2023, as a member of the legal team of the Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, he accused the Senegalese government of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court over the deadly 2023 Senegalese protests. In response, the Senegalese authorities issued an international arrest warrant against him; he was arrested in August 2023 after entering the country clandestinely and deported to France after spending two nights in prison.