Assange faces 17 new criminal charges in US
Lawyer claims freedom of press at stake if Wikileaks founder is extradited over new total of 18 counts
Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, was hit with 17 new criminal charges by the US Justice Department yesterday including “aiding, abetting, and causing” Chelsea Manning to access and leak secret documents. The move is likely to trigger a new battle over press freedom.
JULIAN ASSANGE was yesterday hit with 17 new criminal charges by the US justice department over his role in obtaining and releasing classified information in 2010.
The Wikileaks founder was accused of “aiding, abetting and causing” Chelsea Manning, then a US army intelligence analyst, to access and leak secret government documents.
The 47-year-old Australian was also accused of endangering the lives of US sources in Iran, China, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan by not redacting names when publishing the documents.
The alleged violations of the Espionage Act will trigger a battle over press freedom, given Assange argues he is a journalist and acted no differently from other reporters.
US officials dispute that defence. The case could end up with the courts determining whether Assange is protected by the US constitution’s first amendment, which enshrines freedom of the press.
The charges also escalate an extradition battle playing out in Britain, with both America and Sweden attempting to have Assange sent to their countries first to face prosecution. He is wanted by Swedish prosecutors because of sexual assault claims.
Assange is currently serving a 50week sentence in a British prison for skipping bail. He had been seeking refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London from 2012 but was removed earlier this year.
The new charges go well beyond the single count of computer hacking that the US announced in April. He now faces a total of 18 counts, most carrying a 10-year maximum jail term.
They relate to Assange’s role in what US officials called “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States”.
Manning, who had become disillusioned with the US government’s role in foreign wars, leaked a string of documents – many given “secret” classification – to Assange, which were then published on Wikileaks.
They included around 90,000 Afghanistan war-related significant activity reports, 400,000 Iraq war-related significant activities reports, 800 Guantánamo Bay detainee assessment briefs and 250,000 US state department cables.
US officials allege that Assange played an active role in getting the documents by encouraging Manning to look for more information, discussing ways she could avoid detection and working out how to pass on what she found. Assange is accused of putting human sources helping America in “grave and imminent risk of serious physical harm and/or arbitrary detention” by refusing to redact names contained in the documents.
Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer for Assange, told The Daily Telegraph: “These unprecedented charges demonstrate the gravity of the threat the criminal prosecution of Julian Assange poses to all journalists in their endeavour to inform the public about actions that have been taken by the US government.”