WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange could face the death penalty after being charged in the US with 17 new counts of espionage for publishing classified documents.
The new charges are in addition to an initial indictment accusing him of conspiring with former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.
They are accused of engaging in a conspiracy to crack a US Defence Department computer.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) said Assange will face a maximum of ten years for each of the Espionage Act violations, plus the five-year stretch for his earlier hacking charge.
In the past, some caught violating the Espionage Act 1917 have received the death sentence – most famously Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who spied for the Soviet Union and were subsequently put to death by electric chair in 1953.
However, assurances were reportedly made to Ecuador officials that Assange would not face capital punishment if he was extradited to the US.
Assange was arrested in London in April after being dragged out of the Ecuadorean Embassy.
He had been holed up in the sovereign building for seven years to avoid capture.
The United States is seeking his extradition from the UK – where he's been jailed for 50 weeks for breaching bail.
In letters sent to president Lenin Moreno, both current Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and his predecessor Boris Johnson said an extradition would not be ordered “unless the Home Secretary has first received an adequate assurance that the death penalty will not be imposed”.
DEATH PENALTY
The letters, obtained by the Guardian, said: “You have expressed concern that, should Julian Assange be extradited from the UK, there would be a risk that he could be subject to the death penalty.
"Under UK law, a person’s extradition cannot be ordered if the person concerned will be subject to the death penalty.”
The latest charge says Assange conspired with Manning to obtain and disclose classified national defence documents in 2010.
A charging doc says Assange's actions “risked serious harm” to the United States.
The charge read: “Assange, WikiLeaks affiliates and Manning shared the common objective to subvert lawful restrictions on classified information and to publicly disseminate it.”
CLASSIFIED INFORMATION
Prosecutors allege that Assange and WikiLeaks “repeatedly encouraged sources with access to classified information to steal it”.
The disclosures, prosecutors claim, contained the names of local Afghans and Iraqis who had given information to the US, as well as other confidential sources for the US government.
They said the releases “put innocent people in grave danger simply because they provided information to the United States”.
It's the first time in US history that anyone operating in a journalistic capacity has been charged under the act.
The Espionage Act 1917 and the death penalty
The Espionage Act 1917 was passed by Congress two months after the United States declared war against Germany in World War I.
The act made it a federal crime for any person to interfere with or attempt to undermine the US armed forces during a war, or to in any way assist the war efforts of the nation’s enemies.
Under the terms, signed into law on June 15, 1917 by President Woodrow Wilson, anyone convicted of such acts could face fines of $10,000 and 20 years in prison.
Under one still-applicable provision of the act, anyone found guilty of giving information to the enemy during wartime may be sentenced to death.
The law also authorises the removal of material considered “treasonable or seditious” from US mail.
Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who spied on the Soviet Union, were put to death by electric chair in 1953.
A lawyer for Assange warned the "unprecedented charges" against his client threaten all journalists.
WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson labelled the new charges as "the evil of lawlessness in its purest form".
He added: "With the indictment, the 'leader of the free world' dismisses the First Amendment – hailed as a model of press freedom around the world".
Source: Read Full Article