Stratfor leak: US ‘has secret indictment’ of Julian Assange

Email claims charges ready and waiting for him

By John Leyden

Posted in Security, 28th February 2012 18:26 GMT

US prosecutors have drawn up secret charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, according to a leaked internal email extracted from private US intelligence firm Stratfor and obtained by the whistleblower site.

WikiLeaks began releasing the first tranche of more than five million Stratfor emails on Monday in a bid to show “how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients”. Australian broadsheet The Age, which obtained early access to the emails through an investigative partnership with WikiLeaks, reports that in one internal email sent in January 2011 a senior Stratfor exec writes: “We have a sealed indictment on Assange”.

[…]

The Australian embassy in Washington reported in December 2010 that the US Justice Department was running an “active and vigorous inquiry into whether Julian Assange can be charged under US law, most likely the 1917 Espionage Act”. The cable went on to describe the US investigation into WikiLeaks as “unprecedented both in its scale and nature” adding that rumours that a secret grand jury had been convened in Alexandria, Virginia, were “likely true”, The Age reports.

Suggestions that US prosecutors drew up secret charges against Assange some time ago have appeared while the WikiLeaks founder awaits a UK Supreme Court decision on an appeal against extradition to Sweden for questioning over an alleged sexual assault.

Lawyers acting for Assange have argued that his extradition to Sweden will open the door to a US extradition on possible espionage charges over the leak of confidential US military reports from Iraq and US diplomatic cables.

US army private Bradley Manning, a former Iraq-based intelligence analyst, faces court martial as the alleged source of classified US documents later published by WikiLeaks.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/28/strafor_wikileaks/

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