A Pentagon translator was indicted in Washington on Wednesday for leaking the names of US informants in Iraq to people linked to Lebanese Hezbollah, a crime punishable by life imprisonment. Mariam Thompson, 61, from Rochester, northern Minnesota, had been working for the U.S. Special Forces in Erbil, northern Iraq since mid-December, and had access to documents classified as secret-defense, according to the indictment.
The day after the American strikes against a pro-Iranian militia on December 29, the translator consulted the files of the informants of the American forces and the information which they had provided. After her arrest on February 27, Mariam Thompson confessed to having transmitted the identities of the informants to a Lebanese national "for whom she was attracted" , according to legal documents.
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The Lebanese is a relative of a Lebanese government official and "apparently has ties to Hezbollah," the US Department of Justice said in a statement. Mariam Thompson "has accessed dozens of files on intelligence sources, including their real name, personal identification information, background information and photo, as well as messages detailing the information they have provided to the US government , " said the department.
She was charged with transmitting US national defense information to representatives of a foreign government, which is punishable by life imprisonment. Two days after the death of an American in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk, the American army had struck five bases in Iraq and Syria of a movement close to the pro-Iranian Hezbollah, the Kataeb Hezbollah . At least 25 people were killed and 51 injured, according to the movement.