U.S. unveils espionage charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department unveiled 17 criminal charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Thursday, saying he unlawfully published the names of classified sources and conspired and assisted ex-Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in obtaining access to classified information.

The superseding indictment comes a little more than a month after the Justice Department unsealed a narrower criminal case against Assange. He was charged with conspiring with Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of a 2010 leak by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Mark Hosenball; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)