Washington, April 17 (RHC)-- U.S. federal prosecutors have accused WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of disseminating secret documents with the intent of doing harm to the United States.

A criminal complaint against Assange, dated December 21, 2017, which was unsealed in the federal court in Alexandria, Virginia earlier this week, detailed the case federal prosecutors have prepared against the whistle-blower.

Assange, who was arrested by British police last Thursday after spending seven years in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, is now facing possible extradition to the United States.

Federal prosecutors alleged in the complaint affidavit filed in court that Assange and former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning had reason to believe that leaking U.S. military reports "would cause injury" to the United States.

“Manning and WikiLeaks had reason to believe that public disclosure of the Afghanistan War Reports and Iraq War Reports would cause injury to the United States,” read the complaint affidavit.  The affidavit explains how the two "collaborated" to disseminate hundreds of thousands of pages of U.S. State Department cables and Iraq and Afghanistan secret documents.

Prosecutors claimed the military documents published in the WikiLeaks reports from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq included material “which potentially endangered U.S. troops and Afghan civilians, and aided enemies of the United States.”

"When U.S. forces raided the compound in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was hiding out, for example, they found a letter that showed the Al Qaeda leader was interested in copies of Pentagon documents published on WikiLeaks," the prosecutors said.

According to them, leaked reports on the Afghan war included information on militants' improvised explosive device designs and attacks, including details of U.S. and coalition countermeasures against such home-made explosive devices and their limitations.

The prosecution's affidavit was made public following last week's indictment charging Assange with conspiring with Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of one of the largest compromises of classified information in US history.

Many believe the revocation of Assange's asylum status by the new government of Ecuador and the UK government's arrest of Assange at Washington's behest.

Meanwhile, there has been widespread outrage from across the world over Assange's arrest.  Journalists, lawmakers, politicians and human rights defenders, who consider the Australian whistle-blower to be a hero, are pressuring the UK government to protect Assange against possible persecution and death if he were extradited to the United States.