with any unspecified criminal offense in the United States? — YES
United States prosecutors have accidentally revealed the
existence of criminal charges against Wikileaks founder Julian
Assange in a recently unsealed court filing in an unrelated ongoing
sex crime case in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Assistant US Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer, who made this disclosure
on August 22, urged the judge to keep the indictment [pdf[1]] prepared against
Assange sealed (secret) “due to the sophistication of the
defendant, and the publicity surrounding the case.”
Dwyer is assigned to the WikiLeaks case.
Dwyer also said the charges would “need to remain sealed until
Assange is arrested in connection with the charges” in the
indictment and can, therefore “no longer evade or avoid arrest and
extradition in this matter.”
WikiLeaks, the website that published thousands of classified
U.S. government documents in 2010, said on social network Twitter[2] that the Assange’s name
appearing in those court documents was due to an “apparent
cut-and-paste error.”
The charges America is bringing against the WikiLeaks Founder
remains unclear, but the Justice Department last year was
reportedly considering filing criminal charges against WikiLeaks
and Assange in connection with the leak of diplomatic cables and
military documents in 2010.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller is probing leaks during the
U.S. 2016 presidential election, and it was WikiLeaks who made
public stolen emails from officials of Democratic National
Committee (DNC), including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John
Podesta.
Assange, the 47-year-old Australian hacker, founded WikiLeaks in
2006 and has since made many high-profile leaks, exposing ‘dirty’
secrets of several individuals, political parties as well as
government organizations across the world.
Assange has been forced to live in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London
since June 2012, after he was granted asylum by the Ecuador
government when a British court ordered his extradition to Sweden
to face questioning sexual assault and rape.
However, Assange’s relationship with Ecuador has deteriorated in
recent months, leaving his future uncertain. Ecuador has cut him
off the Internet and any communication with the outside world
except for his lawyers since this March.
The circumstances even made it difficult for him to do his job
of editor-in-chief to run WikiLeaks and forced the whistleblower
organization to appoint its new editor-in-chief, Kristinn
Hrafnsson.
The new charges against Assange could ultimately have additional
cascading effects.
“The news that criminal charges have apparently been filed
against Mr. Assange is even more troubling than the haphazard
manner in which that information has been revealed,” Assange lawyer
Barry Pollack told The New York Times.
“The government bringing criminal charges against someone for
publishing truthful information is a dangerous path for a democracy
to take.”