Two Icelandic men formerly tied to the website WikiLeaks were investigated in secret by the US Justice Department

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (AFP Photo / Anthony Devlin)

 Assange, the publisher and founder of WikiLeaks, has been inside of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for one year as of this week. He is wanted for questioning in Sweden for alleged sex crimes, but fears the court-ordered extradition to the Scandinavian country is a step towards sending him to America. There, he assumes, he’d likely be tried for espionage and perhaps sentenced to death. Ecuador's President Rafael Correa has granted Assange asylum, but British authorities have been ordered to arrest him if he exits the embassy. Both Snorrason and McCarthy collaborated with Assange after the WikiLeaks founder visited Iceland while the website was still in its infancy. They have each distanced themselves from the website in the years since but are far from the only individuals being probed by the US Justice Department for their past participation. Perhaps most well-known among the Americans targeted by prosecutors is Bradley Manning, a 25-year-old US Army intelligence analyst currently on trial in Maryland for his alleged role in sending a trove of classified documents to WikiLeaks. If convicted of the most serious of charges, aiding the enemy, Manning could be sentenced to life in prison. In a joint statement authored by Snorrason and McCarthy, the men salute the efforts of both Assange and Manning while condemning the US government’s unforgiving treatment aimed at the WikiLeakers and others who advocate for transparency much to the chagrin of the White House. “The court orders were almost certainly related to the grand jury investigation of the unauthorized public disclosure of information showing considerable misconduct,” the men wrote, “including a number of probable cases of war crimes, by US military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan during their wars in these countries, a list of people being held without trial or legal recourse in Guantanamo Bay and a trove of diplomatic cables detailing the ways the US government have conducted themselves – both good and bad – over many years.” In a pretrial hearing earlier this year in Ft. Meade, Maryland, Manning took credit for sharing with WikiLeaks the material alluded by the Icelanders, including documents that exposed American diplomatic practices described in the press as “embarrassing” and other likely war crimes considered by many as atrocities. Despite this, though, a grand jury investigation into the website has run rampant for years, and several persons, both American and other, are being targeted for their alleged roles within the group. 

Pfc. Bradley E. Manning (AFP Photo / Mark Wilson)

 “Over the last several years we have seen many of our friends, colleagues and allies pestered - for lack of a better term - by overzealous law enforcement, prosecutorial overreach and misapplication of laws which at one point may have been intended to protect democratic values. They have been hunted down, imprisoned and sometimes killed directly or indirectly, all for nothing but their desire to uphold the values our societies hold dear,” Snorrason and McCarthy say in their statement. “No more.” According to a 2011 interview Snorrason gave to the Toonari Post, he began collaborating with WikiLeaks after Assange published a document about an Icelandic bank in July 2009. Snorrason later went on to the group OpenLeaks, a similar organization started by former WikiLeaker Daniel Domscheit-Berg. McCarthy was described as “a former WikiLeaks volunteer” as early as October 2010, according to an article that month in the UK’s Telegraph, but has been tied directly to perhaps the most well-known disclosure published by Assange: a video of a US helicopter engaging in battle with unarmed Iraqi civilians released in 2010 under the name “Collateral Murder” thanks McCarthy in the closing credits. Manning has admitted to sending WikiLeaks the video shortly after being deployed to Iraq in late 2009.

US President Barack Obama (AFP Photo / Johannes Eiselle)

 On their part, Snorrason and McCarthy say the Justice Department's disclosure of the investigation suggests they may no longer be the targets of the grand jury probe being conducted in secrecy by the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. “This investigation, which appears to be winding down as Justice Liam O’Grady felt it safe to unseal the orders, appears to have been conducted not for the purpose of attributing criminal behavior to those guilty of conducting said war crimes and violations of fundamental human rights, but to punish those who performed the public service of making the world aware of them,” they wrote. “We view the documents which Google has finally provided us with,” the men added, “not as testament to our involvement or lack of involvement with the proceedings . . . but as evidence of the need to eliminate the surveillance state, in its entirety, before what democracy we do have is lost for good.” According to the documents, Google was told by the Justice Department that they were prohibited from disclosing to either Snorrason or McCarthy any information about the investigation until indicated. Google was first compelled for details regarding their online activity in July 2011, and the court unsealed the gag-order on May 2, 2013. Both men published documents that only show that Google was asked for data and that the non-disclosure demands were recently lifted. Jacob Appelbaum, an American hacker with well-documented ties to WikiLeaks, tweeted Friday that the government may be unhappy with the publication of the court orders.

 “The unsealing document states that I can do whatever I wish with it,” McCarthy tweeted to Appelbaum. “Which, to be fair, wasn’t much.” “I'm not worried about legal consequences or the US attacking extrajudicially. I am enraged by their disregard for the rule of law,” Snorrason tweeted. 

Appelbaum spoke on behalf of WikiLeaks during a 2010 conference in New York City and has had his electronic records previously subpoenaed by the government, presumably under the secretive grand jury investigation. The Justice Department has acknowledged the probe but has failed to provide any details. Attorney General Eric Holder said previously that the Justice Department and Pentagon are conducting "an active, ongoing criminal investigation” into the documents that have ended up on WikiLeaks. In a conference call with RT and other organizations earlier this week, Assange said that the probe into WikiLeaks remains open and involves a Federal Bureau of Investigation file about his website that’s 42,135 pages long. He defends his work, however, and says that it is necessary to publish classified documents in order to hold those in elected office accountable. The US, on the other hand, equates that behavior with espionage. “The broad case establishes a precedent that publishing national security related information about the United States is espionage,” Assange said.

Taliban associated video production group Manba al-Jihad December 7, 2010 release of someone that appears to be US soldier Bowe Bergdahl (L), who has been held hostage by the Taliban since his disappearance from his unit on June 30, 2009 (AFP Photo / IntelCenter)

  The Afghan Taliban say they are willing to release a US soldier captured in 2009. The group has demanded the release of five senior operatives from Guantanamo Bay prison in exchange for the soldier's freedom. US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is “in good condition,” Taliban spokesperson Shaheen Suhail told AP. Bergdahl has been in captivity since June 30, 2009. The Taliban are demanding the five Gitmo detainees be released before they hand over Bergdahl to the US, Suhail said, adding that the militant movement "wants to build bridges of confidence" through the exchange. Suhail made the remarks from the Taliban's newly opened office in the Qatari capital Doha. The proposal comes as the US attempts to press forward with talks with the Taliban despite angry denunciations from Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Kabul suspended security talks with Washington on Wednesday, saying the Afghan government had been sidelined by the US and Taliban in their proposed peace negotiations. "As long as the peace process is not Afghan-led, the High Peace Council will not participate in the talks in Qatar," President Karzai said in a statement. Kabul also complained that the militant movement poses as a representative of the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,’ an entity that Afghan authorities do not recognize as legitimate. The name was used by Afghanistan back when the country was under Taliban rule in the 1990s. The Islamist government was recognized but a handful of UN members, but was ousted by the 2001 NATO invasion. Kabul’s anger came a day after the Taliban opened its office in Doha with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, which the Karzai government blasted as an attempt to create a rival embassy in Qatar. "The agreement was that the office should open only – and only – for negotiations, not as a political entity like a parallel institution to the Afghan Embassy which is already there," Shafiullah Nooristani, a member of the High Peace Council said. The US was expected to start talks with the Taliban as early as this week in Doha. Washington is attempting to secure a safe exit from Afghanistan for its troops next year. Some expected the preliminary talks to open on Thursday, but the meeting became unlikely after Kabul voiced objections, a senior US source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

AFP Photo / Jim Watson

Over 150 doctors and medical professionals have signed an open letter to US President Barack Obama calling for hunger-striking prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba to receive independent medical care. The letter, published in the Lancet medical journal, states that the detainees have "very good reason" not to trust local medical staff, who are required to follow the orders of their military commanders. “Without trust, safe and acceptable medical care of mentally competent patients is impossible. Since the detainees do not trust their military doctors, they are unlikely to comply with current medical advice. That makes it imperative for them to have access to independent medical examination and advice, as they ask, and as required by the UN and World Medical Association.” At least 104 of the 166 detainees at Guantanamo are participating in a hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention without fair trial. Of the hunger strikers, 43 have lost enough weight that military doctors are feeding them through tubes running though their noses and into their stomachs, according to a military spokesman. While the procedure has been described as very painful, prisoners who refuse to be fed are strapped into restraining chairs to immobilize them during the process. With a number of detainees said currently to be “unfit for long-distance flights”, the authors of the letter propose visiting them “under appropriate conditions” to assist in their recovery and release. “We offer our services to visit, examine and advise them, and to assist in any way that is acceptable to all parties. We declare that we have no conflicts of interest.” Earlier this month, three senior medical professors wrote an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine saying that physicians stationed at Guantanamo Bay were violating their ethical obligations by permitting the military to “use them and their medical skills for political purposes.” 

AFP Photo / Jim Watson

 “Force-feeding a competent person is not the practice of medicine; it is aggravated assault,” the professors wrote. “Using a physician to assault prisoners no more changes the nature of the act than using physicians to ‘monitor’ torture makes torture a medical procedure,” Drs. George Annas, Sondra Crosby, and Leonard Glantz stated. “Hunger striking is a peaceful political activity to protest terms of detention or prison conditions; it is not a medical condition, and the fact that hunger strikers have medical problems that need attention and can worsen does not make hunger striking itself a medical problem,” they warned. A Guantanamo spokesman said that tube-feeding detainees is court-approved and medically sound. "It is the policy of the Department of Defense to protect the life and health of detainees by humane and appropriate clinical means, and in accordance with all applicable law and policy," Reuters quoted Navy Captain Robert Durand as saying. In April, the American Medical Association wrote to the defense secretary saying that “forced feeding of [competent] detainees violates core ethical values of the medical profession.”  Barack Obama first pledged to close Guantanamo Bay back in 2008. Last month, he promised to restart the repatriation process for some 86 detainees long-since cleared of the charges brought against them. He also pledged to end the ban on sending prisoners who had been cleared for transfer back to Yemen, one of the main obstacles to closing the camp. This has not happened, however, with Congress concerned that releasing the detainees could endanger the country. At the end of May, Guantanamo prisoners published a plea for the physicians overseeing their detention at the camp to be changed. They argued that the current personnel are not impartial to the wishes of the US government. The letter was signed by nine prisoners and lawyers for several others. Prisoners at Guantanamo began their hunger strike four months ago to attract international attention to their plight. Some of the inmates have been held without a trial for over a decade, and many have expressed fears that they will spend the rest of their lives in Guantanamo cells.