Julian Assange charged by US with computer hacking conspiracy

Julian Assange has been charged by the US with conspiring to hack into a secret Pentagon computer network, in a criminal indictment unveiled soon after the WikiLeaks founder’s arrest in London.

Assange is accused of working with Chelsea Manning, then a US army intelligence analyst, to break into the defense department network in March 2010 to obtain classified documents.

Related: Julian Assange: US justice department says he faces five years in jail – live updates

Assange, 47, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison if convicted, though he may yet face additional charges.

US prosecutors allege Assange helped Manning crack an encrypted password to gain access to the computer network under a username that did not belong to her, making it more difficult for authorities to trace the source of leaked documents.

“Assange, who did not possess a security clearance or need to know, was not authorised to receive classified information of the United States,” they said.

Manning had by then given WikiLeaks hundreds of thousands of secret government records, including logs from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She went on to give them a huge cache of secret diplomatic cables. Some of the files were published by WikiLeaks in partnership with news organisations including the Guardian.

The indictment cited online discussions between the two in which Assange was seen “actively encouraging Manning to provide more information”, the justice department said.

“After this upload, that’s all I really have got left,” Manning was said to have told Assange in one message. Assange allegedly replied: “Curious eyes never run dry in my experience.”

Assange was secretly indicted in March last year by a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, according to the documents released on Thursday. The charge remained a secret until it was partly revealed by the justice department in a mistaken court filing last November.

By charging Assange with hacking rather than for publishing classified information, US prosecutors avoided having to directly challenge the press freedoms guaranteed under the first amendment of the US constitution.

The charge accuses Assange of conspiring to “knowingly access a computer without authorisation” in order to obtain secret information whose release “could be used to the injury of the United States and the advantage of any foreign nation”.

But allies of Assange said the US was prosecuting a publisher by the back door.

Barry Pollack, an attorney for the WikiLeaks founder, condemned what he called “an unprecedented effort” to “extradite a foreign journalist to face criminal charges for publishing truthful information”. Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, described Assange’s arrest as “a dark moment for press freedom”.

Barack Obama’s administration was known to have investigated WikiLeaks in the years following the release of Manning’s document haul. But Eric Holder, Obama’s first attorney general, reportedly decided against bringing charges out of concerns that a precedent could be set for prosecuting publishers.

The grand jury in Virginia has continued investigating Assange in recent months, indicating the possibility of future charges. WikiLeaks has come under scrutiny for publishing leaked spying tools taken from the CIA, and for releasing emails hacked from the accounts of senior Democrats during the 2016 election campaign.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said in response to the charges that Assange had become “a direct participant in Russian efforts to undermine the west” and should be punished.

The US confirmed it would seek the extradition of Assange from the UK. He was arrested on Thursday morning at the embassy of Ecuador, where he had been staying since 2012 after being granted asylum. He was then under investigation by authorities in Sweden for allegations of sexual assault, which he denied.

Attorneys for Assange said they would fight the extradition process, which could result in a lengthy legal dispute in the British courts system.

Manning was convicted in 2013 under the Espionage Act for stealing classified government records. In May 2017 she was released from a military prison in Kansas after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence. Barack Obama granted Manning clemency during his final days in office.

Manning has been jailed in Virginia for the past month after being found in contempt of court for refusing to testify to the grand jury investigating Assange. She was held in solitary confinement for part of that time.