Assange Faces Up To 5 Years In Prison On Hacking Charges – Justice Dept

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange faces up to 5 years in prison on hacking charges.

He was arrested in London on a US warrant charging him over his alleged role in a massive leak of military and diplomatic documents in 2010, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Assange faces up to five years in jail on a federal charge of “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified US government computer,” according to a statement.

The indictment alleges Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning, a former US Army intelligence analyst, to crack a password stored on Department of Defense computers, leading to “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States,” the statement said.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange speaks from a balcony at the Embassy of Ecuador in London./ AFP