Breanna (Bradley) Manning pleads guilty to 10 of 22 charges, awaits sentencing and further prosecution

Posted on March 1, 2013 by denverabc

BradleyManning_2411026bFrom Capitalist Media:

Pfc. Bradley Manning pleaded guilty Thursday to 10 of the 22 charges against him — but not the most serious one, “aiding the enemy” — in what the government says is the largest leak of classified documents in the nation’s history.

And, for the first time, Manning offered his rationale for the crimes.

In court, Manning detailed why and how he sent classified material to WikiLeaks, a group that facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information through its website.

He said he passed on information that “upset” or “disturbed” him, but nothing he thought would harm the United States if it became public. Manning said he thought the documents were old and the situations they referred to had changed or ended.

Reading a statement for more than an hour, Manning described his motivations, beginning with what he called “sigact tables,” documents describing significant actions in Iraq and Afghanistan that he said represented the “ground reality” of both conflicts.

Full story

Filed under: News | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

London: Ecuador grants Julian Assange political asylum, British forces threaten to storm embassy

Posted on August 16, 2012 by denverabc

From the capitalist media:

LONDON — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was granted asylum on Thursday by Ecuador, raising the possibility of a diplomatic showdown between British and Ecuadoran authorities.

The transparency campaigner has been holed up at the Embassy of Ecuador in London for nearly eight weeks after seeking refuge there in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over alleged sex crimes.

Ecuador has announced it’s granting political asylum to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who’s been holed up in the country’s embassy in London since June. Assange faces extradition to Sweden, where he’s wanted on a sexual misconduct charge.

The British Foreign Office made it clear Thursday that Ecuador’s decision does not alter Britain’s intention of fulfilling its legal obligation to extradite Assange. “We shall carry out that obligation,” it said in a statement. “The Ecuadorian government’s decision this afternoon does not change that.”

At a news conference in Quito, Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, said Ecuador had decided to grant asylum “because of the fears expressed by Mr. Assange, we believe that his fears are legitimate, and there are threats that he could face political persecution if the measures aren’t taken to avoid them.”

Patino said Ecuador failed to get guarantees from Britain, Sweden and the United States that Assange would not be extradited from Sweden to the United States. His supporters believe he could be tried for espionage in the United States over his whistle-blowing Web site’s release of hundreds of thousands of confidential military logs and diplomatic cables.

Full story here.

Filed under: News | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Bradley Manning faces an additional 22 charges

Posted on March 3, 2011 by denverabc

Washington (CNN) — The U.S. Army Wednesday notified Pfc. Bradley Manning, a prime suspect in the WikiLeaks case, that he now faces 22 more charges in connection with allegedly downloading secret information from computers in Iraq.

The most serious new charge alleges that he aided the enemy by making this information public. That charge is punishable by death. A news release from the Army said the prosecution team “has notified the defense that the prosecution will not recommend the death penalty,” but technically it is up to the commander overseeing the case to make the final decision about the death penalty.

All told, Manning, a military intelligence analyst from Oklahoma, now faces a total of 34 charges in the case, including:

– Wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the internet

– Theft of public records

– Transmitting defense information

– Transferring classified data onto his personal computer

– Disclosing classified information concerning the national defense.

Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs, would not comment on the new charges, but posted a statement on his blog Wednesday evening:

“Over the past few weeks, the defense has been preparing for the possibility of additional charges in this case.”

U.S. military officials have said that Manning is the prime suspect in the leak of many thousands of classified documents that ended up on the WikiLeaks website. However, WikiLeaks is not mentioned in the charge sheets.

Last August, Coombs said he’d seen no evidence tying Manning to the WikiLeaks case.

Even though the investigators filed the new charges, there are still several legal steps that would be taken before any decision will be made on which charges, if any, Manning would actually face in a court-martial.

One of those steps involves determining Manning’s mental capacity. That step is expected to take two to six more weeks.

is currently being held in the brig at Quantico Marine Base south of Washington, D.C. There has been a push by friends and supporters to have the rules about his confinement conditions eased. They say his confinement, in a one-man cell with only one hour a day outside of the cell for exercise, is unfair.

By Larry Shaughnessy

from: http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/03/02/wikileaks.suspect/index.html



Filed under: News | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Anonymous Cyberactivists Warned of Impending Arrests

Posted on February 7, 2011 by denverabc

Joseph Menn in San Francisco
Financial Times
February 5, 2011

An international investigation into cyberactivists who attacked businesses hostile to WikiLeaks is likely to yield arrests of senior members of the group after they left clues to their real identities on Facebook and in other electronic communications, it is claimed.

Supporters of the internet group – known as Anonymous, which gained wide attention after it co-ordinated attacks that crashed the websites of some businesses that had broken ties with WikiLeaks – have continued to ambush high-profile targets, recently forcing government sites in Egypt and Tunisia to close.

However, a senior US member of Anonymous, using the online nickname Owen and evidently living in New York (Xetra: A0DKRK – news) , appears to be one of those targeted in recent legal investigations, according to online communications uncovered by a private security researcher.

A co-founder of Anonymous, who uses the nickname Q after the character in James Bond, has been seeking replacements for Owen and others who have had to curtail activities, said researcher Aaron Barr, head of security services firm HBGary Federal.

Mr Barr said Q and other key figures lived in California and that the hierarchy was fairly clear, with other senior members in the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Australia.

Of a few hundred participants in operations, only about 30 are steadily active, with 10 people who “are the most senior and co-ordinate and manage most of the decisions”, Mr Barr told the Financial Times. That team works together in private internet relay chat sessions, through e-mail and in Facebook groups. Mr Barr said he had collected information on the core leaders, including many of their real names, and that they could be arrested if law enforcement had the same data.
(more…)

Filed under: News | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

U.S.: Over 40 search warrants served against suspected “hactivists”

Posted on January 29, 2011 by denverabc

The FBI said Thursday that it had served more than 40 search warrants throughout the United States as part of an investigation into computer attacks on websites of businesses that stopped providing services in December to WikiLeaks.

The FBI statement announcing the search warrants was the first indication that the U.S. intends to prosecute the so-called “hacktivists” for their actions in support of WikiLeaks.

The search warrants were executed on the same day authorities in Great Britain announced that they had arrested five people in connection with the attacks, which temporarily crippled the websites of Amazon.com, PaylPal, MasterCard, Visa, the Swiss bank PostFinance and others.

FBI officials were unavailable for comment, and the statement did not say who was served or where the searches were conducted. The statement noted that attacks, known as distributed denial of service attacks and which use easily available software to shutdown a computer network by flooding it with millions of requests for information, violate federal law and are punishable by a prison sentence of 10 years.
(more…)

Filed under: News | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Wikileaks: Bradley Manning tortured, then offered plea deal in exchange for turning on Assange

Posted on December 17, 2010 by denverabc

Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime. Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months — and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait — under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture. Interviews with several people directly familiar with the conditions of Manning’s detention, ultimately including a Quantico brig official (Lt. Brian Villiard) who confirmed much of what they conveyed, establishes that the accused leaker is subjected to detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries.

Since his arrest in May, Manning has been a model detainee, without any episodes of violence or disciplinary problems. He nonetheless was declared from the start to be a “Maximum Custody Detainee,” the highest and most repressive level of military detention, which then became the basis for the series of inhumane measures imposed on him.

More on Bradley’s detention conditions

US authorities have stepped up their efforts to prosecute Julian Assange by offering Bradley Manning, the American soldier allegedly responsible for leaking hundreds of thousands of government documents, the possibility of a plea bargain if he names the Wiki-Leaks founder as a fellow conspirator.

The development follows claims by Mr Assange’s supporters that a grand jury has been secretly empanelled in northern Virginia to consider indicting the WikiLeaks chief. But the US Justice Department has refused to comment on any grand jury activity.

As Mr Assange arrived last night at the East Anglia mansion after his release from a London prison on bail, he said he considered the threat of US legal action to be “extremely serious” even though “they have yet to be confirmed”. He told Sky News: “We have heard today from one of my US lawyers that there may be a US indictment for espionage for me coming from a secret grand jury investigation. “There are obviously serious attempts to take down the content by taking us down as an organisation and taking me down as an individual.

American officials view persuading Pte Manning to give evidence that Mr Assange encouraged him to disseminate classified Pentagon and State Department files as crucial to any prospect of extraditing him for a successful prosecution. To facilitate that, Pte Manning may be moved from military to civilian custody, they say. Since being charged in July with disseminating a US military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed 17 people in Iraq including two Reuters employees, the soldier has been held at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia. But members of his support network insist that he has not co-operated with the authorities since his arrest in May.

More on the plea deal

Filed under: News | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Wikileaks: Grand Jury convened against Assange

Posted on December 13, 2010 by denverabc

AssangeFrom capitalist media:

London (CNN) — A secret grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, is meeting to consider criminal charges in the WikiLeaks case, an attorney for the site’s founder, Julian Assange, told the Al-Jazeera network in an interview.

“We have heard from Swedish authorities there has been a secretly empaneled grand jury in Alexandria. … They are currently investigating this,” Mark Stephens told Al-Jazeera’s Sir David Frost on Sunday, referring to WikiLeaks. The site, which facilitates the disclosure of secret information, has been slowly releasing a trove of more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables since November 28.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said last week that he had authorized “significant” actions related to a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks’ publication of the cables but has declined to elaborate.

Assange is sought for questioning in connection with allegations of sexual assault in Sweden. He surrendered to British authorities last week.

“I think that the Americans are much more interested in terms of the WikiLeaks aspect of this,” Stephens told Al-Jazeera. He said it was his understanding that Swedish authorities have said that if Assange is extradited there, “they will defer their interest in him to the Americans. … It does seem to me that what we have here is nothing more than a holding charge.” The United States just wants Assange detained, he said, so “ultimately they can get their mitts on him.”

Full Story

Filed under: News | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Wikileaks: U.S. to charge Assange with espionage

Posted on December 10, 2010 by denverabc

AssangeFrom the capitalist media:

America is set to bring spying charges against jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, claims his lawyer.

US prosecutors are said to be finalising their case against the 39-year-old Australian behind the publication of more than 250,000 secret diplomatic messages.

Mr Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson said she understands US charges are ‘imminent’.

He is likely to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to receive national defence information if it is known to have been obtained illegally and could be used ‘to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.’
(more…)

Filed under: News | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Wikileaks: Julian Assange arrested

Posted on December 7, 2010 by denverabc

From Capitalist Media:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested Tuesday in London on sexual assault charges, and is due to appear in a British court before the end of the day.

Scotland Yard confirmed in a statement that its said its extradition unit had “arrested Julian Assange on behalf of the Swedish authorities on suspicion of rape.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in Afghanistan visiting U.S. forces, said the arrest was “good news to me.”

The U.S. government is pursuing a criminal investigation of WikiLeaks and Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday that the Obama administration “will do everything that we can both to hold people accountable and to minimize the harm that will befall the American people.”

One of Assange’s lawyers said his team will fight extradition to Sweden, in part to avoid eventually ending up in the hands of U.S. authorities. “I think he will get a fair hearing here in Britain but I think our, his, prospects if he were ever to be returned to the US, which is a real threat, of a fair trial, is, in my view, nigh on impossible,” London lawyer Jennifer Robinson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Kristinn Hrafnsson, a spokesman for WikiLeaks, told the Associated Press that Assange’s arrest “will not change our operation.”

Though the group has plans in place to release an emergency “insurance” file that includes some of the most important documents it has, Hrafnsson said WikiLeaks would only release those if someone on group’s staff were to face “grave matters.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46065.html#ixzz17RQLHSYN

Filed under: News | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Wikileaks: British police say they are poised to arrest Assange

Posted on December 2, 2010 by denverabc

Julian Assange
From Raw Story:

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is in Great Britain and police there are waiting to be given the order to arrest him, the Independent reports.

“Despite accusations that Julian Assange is on the run, The Independent has learnt that Scotland Yard has known his whereabouts for more than a month but has yet to receive official instructions to arrest him….

“The 39-year-old Australian supplied the Metropolitan Police with contact details upon arriving in the UK in October. Police sources confirmed that they have a telephone number for Mr Assange and are fully aware of where he is staying.

“Britain’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) has received the so-called “red notice” – an international arrest warrant – but has so far refused to authorise the arrest of Mr Assange, who is thought to be in South-east England. Until it does, police forces cannot act.”
(more…)

Filed under: News | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Next Page »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,388 other followers