WORLD Assange spy charge

US steps up extradition bid for Australian WikiLeaks founder

JULIAN Assange has been slammed with 18 charges as the US steps up its bid to extradite him.

The Australian WikiLeaks founder was charged by the US Justice Department with receiving and publishing classified information. He had previously only been hit with one computer hacking charge.

The charges were contained in an 18-count indictment announced yesterday. The new charges come as Assange also fights a rape claim in Sweden, which he spent almost seven years in the Ecuadorean embassy in London avoiding.

The new charges are under the US Espionage Act, which Assange’s lawyers always feared would come.

Assange was accused of providing a different user name to former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in a conspiracy to crack a Defence Department computer password.

WikiLeaks used information from Manning to publish tens of thousands of US government documents, including the names of people who helped American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and US diplomats around the world.

The new indictment said Assange conspired with Manning to obtain and disclose classified national defence documents, including State Department cables and reports on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It says his actions “risked serious harm” to the US.

The case presented questions about media freedom, including whether the Justice Department is charging Assange for actions – such as soliciting and publishing classified information – that ordinarily journalists do as a matter of course.

But the US has argued he did not have the protection of freedom of speech because of how he gathered the information.

The 47-year-old is in prison in London after being evicted from the Ecuadorean Embassy in April. The US is seeking his extradition.