She's in jail for refusing to testify to a grand jury. This is not directly part of the leak.

This is related to the leak. She won't testify to the details of how Assange helped her.

Unless I'm missing something, that means her continued incarceration is by her own choice.

"We don't say you commited any crime but either you speak or we'll hold you jailed indefinitely."

That doesn't sound like a first world democratic country. Yet it is.

I'm not sure why you seem to think so. The government does have the ability to force people to testify - just so long as it doesn't force people to incriminate themselves with that testimony. Just like how you get imprisoned for skipping jury duty, you can get held in contempt of court for refusing to testify to a grand jury.

Yes, refusing to testify to the grand jury... in the WikiLeaks case.

She was released when the last grand jury ran out of time. A new grand jury was called, she refused to appear before it and was put back in jail. Presumably there’s an upper limit on how long she can be in jail (this grand jury also has a time limit, plus once Assange’s trial gets far enough along, there won’t be any point to demand that she appear before the grand jury).

> Presumably there’s an upper limit on how long she can be in jail (this grand jury also has a time limit, plus once Assange’s trial gets far enough along, there won’t be any point to demand that she appear before the grand jury).

That's the limit on civil contempt, but there's no reason she couldn't then be charged with criminal contempt and imprisoned for that.