His London arrest paves the way for his possible extradition to the US, which wants him for trying to access a classified US government computer
WikiLeaks’ Editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson and barrister Jennifer Robinson address the media outside Westminster Magistrates Court in London on April 11 2019, after British police arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange earlier today.Picture: Niklas HALLE’N/AFP
Assange, arrested by British police in London and carried out of Ecuador’s embassy there, faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison on the American charges, the US justice department said in a statement.Assange’s indictment arose from a long-running criminal investigation dating back to the administration of former president Barack Obama.
The indictment says that Assange, in March 2010, engaged in a conspiracy to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on US department of defence computers connected to the secret internet protocol network — a US government network used for classified documents and communications.The department says Manning had access to the computers as an intelligence analyst and was using them to download classified records to transmit to WikiLeaks.
Special counsel Robert Mueller also underscored the role of WikiLeaks in his 22-month investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 US election. The website published e-mails damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that Mueller and US intelligence agencies have said were stolen by Russia in a bid to boost Republican Donald Trump’s candidacy.
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