Washington (AFP)
US justice on Thursday charged Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with anti-espionage laws, which may open a debate with defenders of press freedom.
The Australian, already indicted for hacking, is targeted by seventeen new charges, announced the Ministry of Justice.
The United States accuses him of endangering some of its sources when Wikileaks published in 2010 about 750,000 military and diplomatic documents.
They also accuse him of "plotting" with the former US analyst Chelsea Manning, sentenced in 2013 for causing the leak.
Julian Assange is suspected of having "helped to obtain confidential information knowing that it could be used to the detriment of the United States and the benefit of a foreign nation," according to a statement from the Ministry.
The Australian and his supporters have always maintained that he could not be prosecuted for publishing these documents, under the principle of freedom of the press.
"The ministry takes seriously the role of journalists in our democracy but Julian Assange is not a journalist," retorted John Demers, national security affairs officer at the Justice Ministry, at a press conference.
Mr Assange was arrested on 11 April at the Embassy of Ecuador in London, where he had been a refugee for seven years, following an extradition request by the United States.
The same day, Washington announced it had indicted him a year earlier for criminal conspiracy to carry out a "hacking", a sentence punishable by five years in prison.
The new charges may result in ten years' imprisonment each.
And Sweden has relaunched proceedings for rape against Julian Assange.
? 2019 AFP