US Asks Court to Keep Alleged Pentagon Leaker Teixeira Detained

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The US government told a federal court that the alleged leaker of classified security documents, Jack Teixeira, should remain in pretrial detention because he may still have access to sensitive information that could benefit hostile states.

"Defendant poses a serious flight risk. He currently faces 25 years in prison - and potentially far more - and other serious consequences for his conduct; the evidence against him is substantial and mounting; the charged conduct would very obviously end his military career; and he accessed and may still have access to a trove of classified information that would be of tremendous value to hostile nation states that could offer him safe harbor and attempt to facilitate his escape from the United States," the document, filed on Wednesday at a federal district court in Massachusetts, said. "Any promise by the Defendant to stay home or to refrain from compounding the harm that he has already caused is worth no more than his broken promises to protect classified national defense information."

Teixeira, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman, was arrested on April 13 and charged in Boston federal court the next day with unauthorized removal and transmission of national defense information and classified documents or materials, to which he pleaded not guilty. Teixeira is being held without bail pending the detention hearing.

In early April, more than 100 classified US government documents were leaked on social media, apparently showing sensitive intelligence documents on the state of the Ukrainian military and the US and NATO's efforts to strengthen it.