Assange faces a maximum of five years in prison if convicted of the conspiracy charge levied against him last month and a potential ten-year prison sentence for each of the charges today under the
The U. S. Department of Justice on Thursday indicted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on 17 new charges under the Espionage Act for his alleged role in unlawfully obtaining and disclosing classified national defense materials from ex-Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning
The decision came after Assange was arrested in April at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and charged by the U. S. government with one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion in relation to a 2010 WikiLeaks mass release of classified American military reports about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Federal prosecutors accused Assange of assisting Manning in obtaining and publishing classified materials. The Australian national “repeatedly sought, obtained, and disseminated information that the United States classified due to serious risk that unauthorized disclosure could harm the national security of the United States,” the indictment said.
The move has been widely considered unusual, as most cases involving stealing and disseminating classified information have focused on the government employees responsible for the leaks, rather than the publishers.
