WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been charged in the United States with receiving and publishing thousands of classified documents linked to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Lewis Pennock
May 23 2019 11:34 PM
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been charged in the United States with receiving and publishing thousands of classified documents linked to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The US Justice Department has indicted the 47-year-old, who is currently jailed in Britain, on 18 counts that relate to his “alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States”, it said.
He is accused of working with former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in “unlawfully obtaining and disclosing classified documents related to the national defence”, a statement said.
The Justice Department said that by publishing unredacted versions of the leaked files, Assange put “named human sources at a grave and imminent risk”.
After a federal grand jury returned the indictment on Thursday, WikiLeaks swiftly issued a tweet describing the move as “madness”.
“It is the end of national security journalism and the first amendment,” it said.
Manning handed over databases containing roughly 90,000 Afghanistan war-related significant activity reports and 400,000 Iraq war-related significant activities reports, the Justice Department said.
There were also 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs and 250,000 US Department of State cables, it added.
Assange was dramatically dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge, central London, last month, some seven years after he sought political asylum after the documents were published.
He was then jailed for 50 weeks for a bail breach and is fighting against extradition to the US.
US authorities allege the whistleblower conspired with Manning, 31, “with reason to believe that the information was to be used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of a foreign nation”.
