Washington: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is facing extradition from the UK to the US, under the Espionage Act for his role in unlawfully encouraging, receiving and publishing national defence information, faces 17 new charges from the US Justice Department.
Reacting to the develoment, Assange's attorney Barry Pollack said: "These unprecedented charges demonstrate the gravity of the threat the criminal prosecution of Julian Assange poses to all journalists in their endeavour to inform the public about actions that have been taken by the US government."
The new indictment handed down in the Eastern District of Virginia alleges that Assange actively solicited classified information, provoking former American Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to obtain thousands of pages of classified material and providing the former with diplomatic State Department cables, Iraq war-related significant activity reports and information related to Guantanamo Bay detainees, media reports said.
WikiLeaks responded to the news of the superseding indictment in a tweet, saying: "This is madness. It is the end of national security journalism and the First Amendment."
Meanwhile, Assistant Attorney General John Demers, who heads the department's national security division, said: "Julian Assange is no journalist."
In the past, the US Justice Department prosecuted government officials who leak classified information, but latest announcement that a federal grand jury had returned a fresh indictment against the distributor of sensitive documents marked the latest move by President Donald Trump's administration to crack down on unauthorized disclosure of classified information and press freedoms, they said.
Last month, prosecutors in Virginia revealed that Assange had been charged with a single count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion related to helping Manning obtain access to Defence Department computers in 2010.
The Justice Department's move came within a window for the US to submit its formal request outlining all legal charges that Assange would face if he was transferred to
the US, the reports said.
Hours after his removal last month from refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, the US indicted Assange for helping Manning access Defence Department computers in 2010 in an effort to disclose secret government documents.
Manning was found guilty in 2013 of charges including espionage for leaking secret military files to Wikileaks, but her sentence was commuted.
