Jeremy Hammond
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Jeremy Hammond is an American hacker, sentenced to ten years under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, who was later held in contempt for refusing to testify against Julian Assange before a grand jury. John Kiriakou has raised his case chiefly to identify a punishment that went unremarked.

The indefinite grand jury

Kiriakou groups Hammond with Chelsea Manning: both were held without charge for refusing to testify, and "these grand juries are renewed even after their term runs out, and as a result people like Chelsea and Jeremy can be held literally indefinitely."

He identifies a legal problem in that, since Assange had already been charged: "there's a law in the United States saying that a grand jury cannot continue to be impaneled once the charges have been levied. Well, this tells me that either the Department of Justice is breaking the law in continuing to hold Chelsea and Jeremy, or they intend to add additional charges on to the two dozen plus charges they've already filed against Julian."

The eighteen months

The part Kiriakou says was missed is what the transfer to the Alexandria holding centre cost. Hammond had been in RDAP, the Bureau of Prisons residential drug and alcohol programme, which takes off up to eighteen months of a sentence, "but you have to complete the whole year before you get the reward."

"Jeremy had two months left to go in his RDAP counselling. They yanked him out of RDAP to send him to Alexandria jail ... That means that they have effectively added 18 months to his sentence. So even if he had agreed to testify, this was just a way to screw Jeremy Hammond and to lengthen his sentence."

See also

- Chelsea Manning
- Julian Assange
- RDAP
- Espionage Act
