Julian Assange arrested, charged with conspiracy to hack US computers

Enlarge / Julian Assange gestures to the media from a police vehicle on his arrival at court on April 11, 2019 in London. (credit: Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

British police arrested Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on Thursday. He had been hiding in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 and was arrested after the Ecuadorian government invited the Metropolitan Police Service into the embassy to remove him. Assange was initially arrested for jumping bail in 2012, but the Metropolitan Police Service subsequently announced that he had been "further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities."

After Assange's arrest, the US Justice Department unsealed its indictment against him. The indictment focuses on Assange's role in helping Chelsea Manning steal classified information from the US military.

In 2010, "Assange agreed to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on United States Department of Defense computers," the indictment charges. Manning allegedly provided Assange with the hash of a password and asked Assange to crack it.

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