The Prosecutor's Office accuses the suspect of the Pentagon leak of appropriation of classified documents

Unauthorized appropriation and retention of classified documents affecting national security.

It is the charge of which the National Guard soldier Jack Teixeira, 21, was formally accused this Friday in a preliminary hearing in a Boston court.

Teixeira had been arrested on Thursday at his home in the town of North Dighton, in the State of Massachusetts, as a suspect in the biggest leak of US military secrets since the Wikileaks scandal in 2010.

The charges against him can carry a sentence of 10 years in prison, but if aggravated or added to other charges, Teixeira could be sentenced to a longer sentence if convicted.

Chelsea Manning, author of the leak of more than 700,000 documents published by Wikileaks, was sentenced to 35 years in prison before being pardoned by the then president, Barack Obama.

At Teixeira's hearing, a federal judge has ordered that the soldier remain in the custody of the authorities until at least next Wednesday, when a new hearing will be held.

Prosecutor Nadine Pellegrini had requested that he not be granted bail.

Teixeira had arrived at the courthouse handcuffed and dressed in the inmates' beige uniform and a black T-shirt.

During the brief hearing he remained seated in the dock, next to his lawyer.

He only spoke twice, when asked if he understood that he had the right to remain silent, and to confirm a form about his financial situation, which entitles him to help with his legal costs.

On both occasions he said a terse: "Yes."

The Department of Justice considers that the young soldier was the leader of a private group on a social media channel, specifically Discord, in which information about video games, firearms, and memes was shared.

For months, according to the investigators of the case, Teixeira had also begun to disclose highly classified information of all kinds there.

Most of it related to the war in Ukraine, but also about other sensitive points on the planet, from North Korea to the Middle East.

The leak, and the content that has been revealed in those texts, has sparked tensions between Washington and several of its allies, including Egypt, Israel and South Korea.

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