Prison Planet.com » US ‘secretly charged’ Assange, prosecutor accidentally reveals – WikiLeaks

RT
November 16, 2018

Julian Assange has been already charged by the US, but the case will remain sealed until the arrest of the whistleblower, WikiLeaks has revealed citing court filings unrelated to its co-founder.

“…no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged,” assistant US Attorney Kellen S. Dwyer wrote urging a judge to keep the matter sealed. However, the exact nature of the alleged charges against the whistleblower was not immediately revealed and is not to be disclosed until Assange’s arrest, according to the document.

WikiLeaks tweeted the document on Thursday, saying it was an “apparent cut-and-paste error.”

The same court filings were cited in a Washington Post report. The paper said citing its sources that what Dwyer said was true, but the disclosure was unintentional.

The US attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, where the document revealing the alleged charges was originally filed, said the “court filing was made in error,” according to the Washington Post report.

Earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported citing sources that prosecutors in the US were discussing the possibility of charging Assange with a number of crimes which, they hope, would see him expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

While the DOJ has been investigating Assange for eight years, the prosecutors have yet to agree on the precise charges the 47-year-old might face. The possibility of charging the whistleblower with violating the Espionage Act has come up in discussions, WSJ notes.

The DOJ could choose to prosecute Assange in connection with Chelsea Manning’s disclosure of some 750,000 military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks back in 2010. In particular, the publication of classified US military footage entitled ‘Collateral Murder’ made headlines at the time, after it showed a US Apache helicopter opening…

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