The Justice Department has formally asked Britain to extradite WikiLeaks founder¹ Julian Assange to the United States to face charges related to his release of a massive trove² of secret diplomatic cables and war logs, a U.S. official said on Tuesday.

一名美国官员周二表示，美国司法部已正式要求英国将维基解密创始人阿桑奇引渡到美国。阿桑奇将面临与泄露大量机密外交电报和战争信息有关的多项指控。

A formal request for Assange’s extradition³ was delivered to British authorities last Thursday, just days before a June 11 deadline. 美国在上周四、也就是在6月11日截止日几天前向英国当局送交了引渡阿桑奇的正式请求。

Under an extradition treaty with the United Kingdom, the U.S. had 60 days from the date of Assange’s April 11 arrest in London to file a formal request for his handover. The treaty bars U.S. prosecutors⁴ from charging Assange with crimes not outlined in the request, making the filing of additional counts against Assange highly unlikely. 根据与英国签署的引渡条约，从阿桑奇4月11日在伦敦被捕之日起，美国有60天的时间向英国递交正式移交请求。引渡条约禁止美国检察官以请求中未列明的罪名起诉阿桑奇，因此阿桑奇面对更多指控的可能性非常小。

The Australian-born computer programmer and activist⁵ is being sought to face charges in federal court in Northern Virginia that he worked with former Army specialist Chelsea Manning to unlawfully obtain and publish hundreds of thousands of reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as conditions within the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

北弗吉尼亚州的联邦法院要求这位澳大利亚出生的计算机程序员和活动人士出庭受审。阿桑奇被控与前陆军军人曼宁合作，非法获取并公布了数十万份有关阿富汗和伊拉克战争，以及古巴关塔那摩军事监狱情况的报告。

Assange had eluded⁶ arrest for seven years by holing up in Ecuador's embassy in London until Ecuadorian officials turned against him in April. 七年来，阿桑奇一直在厄瓜多尔驻伦敦大使馆里躲避逮捕，直到今年4月厄瓜多尔官员撤销他的庇护身份。

After his arrest by London police, U.S. prosecutors unsealed a year-old indictment⁷ charging him with a single count of computer intrusion in connection with the publication of the secret documents. But last month, they upped the ante, accusing Assange in a new 18-count superseding⁸ indictment of violating the 1917 Espionage⁹ Act by distributing classified information.

在阿桑奇被伦敦警方逮捕后，美国检察官公布了一份一年前的起诉书，仅指控阿桑奇在公布机密文件过程中侵入电脑。但上个月，他们加大了力度，在一份包括18项指控的新起诉书中，阿桑奇被控散布机密信息，违反了《1917年间谍法》。

Assange, 47, faces up to 10 years in prison for each of the new charges.

47岁的阿桑奇在每一项最新的指控中最高可判10年监禁。

The Espionage Act was enacted¹⁰ by Congress to deter¹¹ spies from passing secret information to foreign governments. The last time a grand jury returned an indictment under the law the U.S. was at war with Nazi¹² Germany.

美国国会通过《间谍法》是为了阻止间谍向外国政府传递机密信息。大陪审团上一次根据该法发布起诉书是在二战期间。

Yet it remains¹³ far from certain that Assange will stand trial in the United States. That is because the U.S.-U.K. treaty prohibits extradition for the specific charges Assange faces, according to legal experts.

然而，阿桑奇是否会在美国受审还远未确定。据法律专家称，这是因为美英条约禁止引渡阿桑奇面临的这种特殊指控。

“Espionage is generally considered a political offense¹⁴, and the treaty forbids extraditing someone charged with political offenses,” John T. Nelson, a legal fellow at the Just Security blog, wrote recently. Just Security博客的法律研究员纳尔逊(John T. Nelson)最近写道，“间谍活动通常被认为是一种政治犯罪，条约禁止引渡被控政治犯罪的人。”

Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006 as “an intelligence agency of the people." To obtain secret documents to publish on his website, he “repeatedly encouraged sources with access to classified information to steal and provide it to WikiLeaks to disclose,” prosecutors wrote in the superseding indictment.

阿桑奇于2006年创建了维基解密，称其为“人民的情报机构”。检方在新的起诉书中写道，为了获得要发布在其网站上的机密文件，他“一再鼓励接触机密信息渠道的人士窃取信息，并提供给维基解密予以披露”。

The WikiLeaks founder took refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face sex crime allegations made by two women. A Swedish court ruled last week that Assange should not be extradited to Sweden but should still be questioned in the case while he is imprisoned¹⁵ in Britain.

阿桑奇2012年开始在厄瓜多尔驻伦敦大使馆避难，以避免被引渡到瑞典面对两名女性的性犯罪指控。瑞典一家法院上周裁定，阿桑奇不应被引渡到瑞典，但他在英国服刑期间仍应接受审讯。