United States v. Julian Paul Assange: indictment (March 2018)

The original indictment against me, Criminal No. 1:18-cr-111, was returned by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, and filed under seal on 6 March 2018. It contained a single count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion under 18 U.S.C. §§ 371 and 1030.

The indictment alleged that on or about 8 March 2010 I had agreed to help Chelsea Manning crack part of a password stored on Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network (SIPRNet), which would have allowed Manning to log on under another username and made it harder to identify her as the source of disclosures. It also set out that Manning had downloaded four nearly complete databases – approximately 90,000 Afghanistan war reports, 400,000 Iraq war reports, 800 Guantánamo detainee assessment briefs and 250,000 State Department cables – and provided them to WikiLeaks.

The charge carried a maximum sentence of five years. It was unsealed on 11 April 2019, when I was arrested in the United Kingdom after nearly seven years in Ecuador's London embassy, and was superseded by an 18-count indictment the following month.

The indictment was made public by the US Department of Justice, which published it with a press release on 11 April 2019. An indictment contains allegations only; this one was superseded in May 2019 and again in June 2020, and the case was resolved by the June 2024 plea agreement, under which the United States agreed to dismiss the Virginia indictment.