A 21-year-old man was arrested Thursday in the United States as part of the investigation into the leak of confidential American documents, a case posing a "very serious" risk to national security according to the Pentagon.
This arrest, filmed live by American television, is the culmination of a week of investigations into one of the most important classified document leak files of the past ten years.
The suspect, Jack Teixeira, an employee of the Air National Guard, "was arrested without incident" in Dighton, a small rural town south of Boston, said Justice Minister Merrick Garland at a press conference.
He could appear in court in Massachusetts (northeast) on Friday, according to a source within the Department of Justice.
The televisions broadcast aerial images repeatedly showing his arrest by security forces agents.
We could see a man, hands on his head and wearing a gray t-shirt and red shorts, slowly retreating towards armed security forces and in camouflage before being arrested, then escorted to a vehicle.
"There is a full investigation underway (...) and they are getting closer" to the outcome, US President Joe Biden said earlier during a visit to Ireland. "I'm concerned this has happened," he added.
The US Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation after the documents leaked online, which detail Washington's views on the war in Ukraine and appear to indicate intelligence gathering on close US allies, including Israel and South Korea.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the leak was the work of a young man who worked on a military base, who shared his information on a private online group on the social network Discord. Under the pseudonym "OG", the suspect would have published for months documents from the military base where he works.
Two posts on the Massachusetts Air National Guard's 102nd Intelligence Wing Facebook page mentioned Jack Teixeira, including one from July 2022 that said he had been promoted to Airman First Class.
The US National Guard Bureau said Teixeira enlisted in September 2019 and is an IT and communications specialist who reached the rank of airman first class -- the third-lowest for enlisted air force personnel.
“OG” had asked other members of the Discord group not to distribute the documents, assuring that he had no intention of being a whistleblower, according to the Washington Post. He was critical of the state -- whose "abuse of power" he denounced --, law enforcement and the intelligence community.
The group, made up of around 20 people, including some from Russia and Ukraine, was formed in 2020 around their mutual passion for firearms, military equipment and religion.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said the United States was examining the "implications" of the leak "for national security".
The Pentagon has also decided to further restrict access to this type of sensitive information, Jean-Pierre told the press on the sidelines of Joe Biden's trip to Ireland.
The spokeswoman added that the US government wants social networks "to avoid facilitating" the distribution of such confidential material, believing that they have "a responsibility to their users and to the country".
A spokesperson for Discord told AFP that the safety of its users was the platform's priority, ensuring that it cooperated with law enforcement.
The fact that these documents circulate online represents "a very serious risk to national security and has the potential to fuel disinformation", said Monday a spokesman for the United States Department of Defense, Chris Meagher.
And Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder on Thursday called the leak a "deliberate criminal act."
The documents posted online reveal in particular the concerns of the American intelligence services as to the viability of a Ukrainian counter-offensive against Russian forces.
A document reviewed by AFP also expressed US concerns about Ukraine's ability to continue to defend itself against Russian strikes.
Dozens of photos of these documents have been relayed on Discord, but also Twitter and Telegram, some having undoubtedly circulated for weeks, if not months, before attracting the attention of the press.
However, US authorities have not publicly confirmed the authenticity of these documents posted online, and it has not yet been independently verified.
Many of these documents are no longer available on the sites where they originally appeared.
13/04/2023 23:39:15 - Washington (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
