The US Department of Justice has brought 17 new charges against Julian Assange.
This follows the Wikileaks founder’s arrest in the UK last month.
The new charges are under the Espionage Act and relate to publishing leaked and or confidential information. No one has been prosecuted under such charges in US history.
Critics are calling it an attack on the First Amendment of freedom of speech. Journalists and news outlets are usually not challenged over merely reporting information known to have been leaked elsewhere.
Barry Pollack, an American attorney for Assange said the charges are ominous.
“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 U.S. government,” he said.
Assange was previously charged with conspiring with ex-US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of a 2010 leak by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Manning was arrested in May 2010 and convicted by court martial in 2013 of espionage in connection with the 2010 Wikileaks disclosures.
President Barack Obama reduced Manning’s sentence to 7 years from 35 years, but she is now in jail after repeatedly refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Assange.
Assange faces extradition to the United States, after Ecuador in April revoked his seven-year asylum in the country’s London embassy. Police arrested him as he left the embassy on April 11.
Assange is now serving a 50-week sentence in a London jail for skipping bail when he fled to the Ecuadorean embassy in 2012.
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HeadlineAssange faces 17 new charges of publishing State secrets
Short HeadlineAssange faces fresh charges
StandfirstCritics call charges chilling clampdown
The US Department of Justice has brought 17 new charges against Julian Assange.
This follows the Wikileaks founder’s arrest in the UK last month.
The new charges are under the Espionage Act and relate to publishing leaked and or confidential information. No one has been prosecuted under such charges in US history.
Critics are calling it an attack on the First Amendment of freedom of speech. Journalists and news outlets are usually not challenged over merely reporting information known to have been leaked elsewhere.
Barry Pollack, an American attorney for Assange said the charges are ominous.
“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 U.S. government,” he said.
Assange was previously charged with conspiring with ex-US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of a 2010 leak by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Manning was arrested in May 2010 and convicted by court martial in 2013 of espionage in connection with the 2010 Wikileaks disclosures.
President Barack Obama reduced Manning’s sentence to 7 years from 35 years, but she is now in jail after repeatedly refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Assange.
Assange faces extradition to the United States, after Ecuador in April revoked his seven-year asylum in the country’s London embassy. Police arrested him as he left the embassy on April 11.
Assange is now serving a 50-week sentence in a London jail for skipping bail when he fled to the Ecuadorean embassy in 2012.
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