Julian Assange faces 17 new charges for violating US espionage law
The US Department of Justice has filed 17 new charges against Julian Assange. These charges all revolve around alleged violations of the US Espionage Act.
A federal investigative jury, incidentally the same jury responsible for Chelsea Manning’s jailing of her for refusing to testify, has filed an 18-part indictment, the US Department of Justice reports. In the indictment, Assange is accused of colluding with Chelsea Manning and helping her obtain classified information and publishing it on the assumption that he did this to harm the United States or another nation. That amounts to a total of 17 violations of the American Espionage Act of 1917.
The United States has not previously successfully prosecuted a non-government official for publishing, obtaining or sharing illegally obtained classified information, Geoffrey Stone, a law professor, told NBC News. WikiLeaks is outraged by the new charges. The organization calls it ‘insanity’ and argues that this is the end of national security journalism and the end of the First Amendment. WikiLeaks also states that this is an unprecedented attack on the free press. Freedom of the Press calls it on Twitter a “terrifying threat to the First Amendment to the US Constitution” and argues that the charges against Assange mean all journalists are ‘in extreme danger’.
According to NBC, a US government official told reporters that “Assange is not a journalist.” “No responsible person, journalist or anyone else would knowingly publish names that they know are secret sources in war zones,” the official said. However, according to The New York Times, Justice Department officials did not answer questions about how Assange’s actions differ from mainstream investigative journalism. The newspaper, like many other news organizations, reports having received exactly the same archives from WikiLeaks, without permission from the US government.
The seventeen new espionage-related charges are in addition to the hacking charge already formulated; this allegation of computer intrusion into a US state computer, which Manning had access to in her role as an analyst, has so far been used by the US as a ground for the extradition request. According to a US prosecutor, he could receive up to five years in prison on that basis, but with the 17 new charges that could be a total of 175 years in prison, because the maximum sentence for each of the 17 new charges is 10 years, the ministry said. at a press conference in Washington.
Assange is still in a cell in the United Kingdom. He was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for violating his bail conditions seven years ago by failing to appear in court. That was made possible by Assange’s arrest in London on April 11 after Ecuador revoked his asylum status. This made his stay in the embassy of the South American country untenable. The question now is whether and to which country Assange will be extradited. Both the US and Sweden want the UK to extradite him. In Sweden he is suspected of rape.