Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks Julian Assange gestures as he arrives at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London, after the WikiLeaks founder was arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police and taken into custody Thursday April 11, 2019. Police in London arrested WikiLeaks founder Assange at the Ecuadorean embassy Thursday for failing to surrender to the court in 2012, shortly after the South American nation revoked his asylum. (Victoria Jones/PA via AP)

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been indicted on charges accusing him of conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to share leaked classified information.

The indictment came the same day Ecuador rescinded asylum for Assange, who had been staying in that country's embassy in London to avoid extradition to the United States.

The charges were revealed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The one-count indictment includes allegations of conspiring to illegally accessing a computer, and concealing Manning's identity as the source of the leak.

Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in a statement Thursday:

“Any prosecution by the United States of Mr. Assange for Wikileaks' publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations. Moreover, prosecuting a foreign publisher for violating U.S. secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public's interest.”

Assange's legal team includes Washington, D.C., attorney Barry Pollack. Pollack left Miller & Chevalier last year to become a partner at the boutique Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck, Untereiner & Sauber, but he is representing Assange through an independent firm.

The charging document is posted below:

Read the indictment: 

 


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