Against the founder of the WikiLeaks portal, Julian Assange, a new indictment has been issued alleging his connection with the hacker groups Anonymous and LulzSec. This is stated in the message of the US Department of Justice.
“The federal grand jury has issued a second indictment against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange regarding his alleged role in one of the largest classified information leaks in US history,” the press release said.
At the same time, the new indictment does not contain any new separate criminal episodes attributed to Assange, however, according to the US Department of Justice, it "expands the scope of the conspiracy around the alleged computer hacks." According to the agency, the accusation to the founder of WikiLeaks still totals 18 points.
“This indictment does not contain new criminal episodes in addition to the 18 points listed in the indictment against Assange of May 2019. However, it is expanding the scope of the conspiracy around the alleged computer hacks that Assange was previously accused of, ”the document says.
According to a new indictment, in 2012 Assange allegedly contacted the leader of the hacker group LulzSec (who at that time was already collaborating with the FBI). The founder of WikiLeaks provided him with a list of potential targets for hacking, allegedly indicating that the “greatest resonance” would be the publication of materials stolen from the CIA, the US National Security Agency, and The New York Times.
In addition, the conclusion states that WikiLeaks has published correspondence of an American consulting company that cooperates with special services. This correspondence was also obtained by a hacker associated with LulzSec and Anonymous.
The whistleblower story
Recall, Washington began the persecution of Assange in 2010, when hundreds of thousands of documents regarding the actions of the US Army in the Middle East were published on the WikiLeaks portal. Data was obtained from Bradley Manning, a US Army intelligence officer.
The documents contained information about the crimes of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, including evidence of torture, a video of the shooting of civilians by the Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007, as well as information about the large number of civilian casualties resulting from the actions of the US Armed Forces.
- US Department of Justice Building in Washington
- AFP
- © Samuel Corum / Getty Images North America
In August 2013, a military tribunal was held that sentenced Manning to 35 years in prison. January 17, 2017, three days before the expiration of his presidency, Barack Obama signed a decree mitigating the sentence to the military. Manning, who had changed his gender and name during his imprisonment, was released in May 2017.
Julian Assange, fearing that Britain would extradite him to Sweden, and from there he would be extradited to the United States, took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012. During Assange’s isolation in the diplomatic mission, the WikiLeaks portal published many different materials: classified documents regarding the Guantánamo Prison, data from the US National Security Agency and information about the CIA’s secret cyber program called Vault 7.
Assange was arrested by British police on April 11, 2019. Ecuadorian diplomats allowed security officials to enter embassy territory after President Lenin Moreno stated that he was refusing political asylum to the founder of WikiLeaks. The head of the South American state specified that such a decision was made because of "repeated violations of international conventions." In addition, Assange was deprived of Ecuadorian citizenship.
The formal reason for the arrest was the failure of the Australian journalist to appear in a British court in 2012 at the request of the Swedish authorities.
Note that the leaders of US intelligence under Barack Obama claimed that the “Russian hackers” hacked the mail servers of the National Committee of the Democratic Party and the campaign headquarters of Hillary Clinton and transmitted the received materials to WikiLeaks.
In 2017, Mike Pompeo, who was then the head of the CIA, called WikiLeaks “a non-state, hostile intelligence service,” supported by Russia. Commenting on Assange's arrest in 2019, a similar opinion was expressed by US Vice President Mike Pence.
As for the new indictment against the Australian journalist, analysts believe that such actions on the part of the Justice Ministry mean that Washington will do everything possible so that Assange will never be released.
“This will continue until Assange is extradited to the United States and falls under the complete control of the American authorities,” Vladimir Bruter, an expert at the International Institute for Humanitarian and Political Studies, said in an interview with RT.
According to him, the founder of WikiLeaks dealt a too painful blow to the prestige of the American political establishment.
“Assange violated one of the basic principles of the American political elite: not to give out to the public the contents of this backstage. His actions are categorically contrary to the interests of the US establishment, which believes that it is beyond the possible influence of public opinion. Assange disputed such a position, and for this he should be punished, ”explained Bruter.
The inevitability of “justice”
According to experts, if Assange is extradited to the United States and found guilty, he could face imprisonment of almost 180 years - 10 years in prison for each prosecution, excluding the article on a conspiracy to hack for a maximum of five years imprisonment.
Also in 2019, after Assange’s arrest, the media also discussed the likelihood that journalists could be sentenced to death if the US authorities accuse him of espionage. However, then British Foreign Minister Alan Duncan said that London would not extradite the founder of WikiLeaks to the United States if there he would face capital punishment.
- Reuters
- © Henry Nicholls
After the prime minister took Boris Johnson, official London did not make any statements on this issue.
From the point of view of political scientists, Great Britain has not yet decided which position it takes regarding Assange. So, according to Vladimir Bruter, the authorities of the United Kingdom are not ready to release Assange now, but at the same time they are clearly not in a hurry to extradite him.
“I think London would not want to give it away. Some political games will be fought around this issue, ”the political scientist predicts.
A similar point of view is shared by Konstantin Blokhin, a researcher at the Center for Security Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In his opinion, one should not expect that the prosecution of Assange for any reason will be terminated.
“Assange showed the world the wrong side of American democracy, its dirty laundry, US crimes around the world. Now the American elite and special services will take revenge on him, try to integrate his case into political discourse, they can even build logical chains, lines between Assange and hackers that helped to sink Hillary Clinton and thereby form the basis for Trump’s victory, ”Blokhin explained in a conversation with RT.
At the same time, he suggested that Britain, which is a close ally of the United States, is unlikely to refuse to extradite Assange to the White House, since there are special relations between these countries, especially in the field of intelligence information exchange.