When someone is accused of soliciting child pornography, the natural reaction is disgust and demonization of the alleged perpetrator. However, in the case of Matthew DeHart, these charges indicate what appears more to be a broad cover-up intended to silence a government dissenter.

DeHard maintained a hidden server that may have sent classified information to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. Evidence suggests that he has since been targeted and tortured for being a member of Anonymous.

Here is what we know so far:

DeHart, age 30, is a former U.S. soldier from Indiana who worked as an intelligence analyst for the Air National Guard with a top secret clearance. His unit, the 181st intelligence wing, operated drones. While he was still in the military, he began working with the hacktivist group Anonymous after learning about CIA involvement in the killing of innocent men, women and children by drones.

Anonymous formed out of an image-based website called 4chan.org, in which DeHart was an active participant since the early days of the site. According to DeHart, his job was to help Anonymous operatives communicate securely. “I would protect people from NSA spying,” he told the National Post.

Later, DeHart was an administrator of a Tor service called Shell Onion, which provided accounts for anonymous users. While working there, he came across a file detailing an FBI investigation into illegal activities carried out by the CIA. DeHart reportedly deleted the file, which was unencrypted, but found the same file encrypted on another server, which he allegedly believed was being sent to Wikileaks.

Soon afterwards, DeHart was discharged from the military for depression, although he claims the Air Force knew about his online activities and that the U.S. government was pursuing him because of his associations and activities with Anonymous.

On Jan. 25, 2010, law enforcement issued a search warrant which, they said, was to search for a evidence of child pornography that DeHart was in possession of. Officials seized his computer and most of his date storing devices, but didn’t find any evidence of child pornography.

The solicitation of child pornography charges initially stemmed from a complaint by the mother of a teenage member of a World of Warcraft guild in 2008, claiming DeHart solicited naked pictures – a charge he denies. A judge noted that the seized computers in the raid were not analyzed for child pornography. Yet these charges remain the only official criminal indictment of DeHart to date.

On Aug. 6, 2010, Dehart crossed the border of the United States into Canada with the apparent intent of attending a Canadian college in order to earn a degree in welding. Instead of that, he was handed over to FBI agents by border agents, who had received an alert that he was wanted for questioning in a national security matter.

DeHart claims he was then taken to a basement medical room in the detention center where he was injected with a drug and afterwards interrogated. According to an unclassified FBI report, he was questioned about his visits to the Russian and Venezuelan embassies. DeHart told officials he was trying to find out who the Russian intelligence officers were because he allegedly wanted to do some covert work for the U.S. government.

Then, approximately two hours into the interview, DeHart was suddenly told he was being arrested for child pornography. The FBI agents, according to DeHart, intimated that they knew the pornography charges were false. But official documents say that DeHart became cooperative afterwards, and started telling the agents that he went to the foreign embassies with the intent of selling U.S. government secrets – a claim DeHart later said was “laughably inaccurate.”

DeHart later said that he contacted the Venezuelan and Russian embassies because he feared a reprisal from the U.S. government and was seeking help from those nations. He also contacted the Cuban Embassy previously when he was in Mexico, according to FBI documents.

Later on the day of his interrogation, at around 6pm, DeHart collapsed in the cell of a prison to which he was transferred in Bangor, Maine. According to the medical report, the doctors found that he was suffering from “acute psychosis associated with tachycardia and tremors… consistent with possible drug-induced psychosis.” A toxicology report indicated that DeHart showed positive for amphetamines. The medical report also said that he should have a psychological evaluation. Instead, he was handed back over to the FBI.

For the following two weeks, the FBI interrogated DeHart without counsel. He was then ordered to be sent to Tennessee in a hearing where, according to a local paper, he collapsed in court. DeHart said he was denied food, water and sleep, and was interrogated by special agents from the counterintelligence division of the FBI. He later signed waivers of his constitutional right to counsel as well as ceded control of his social media and email accounts.

When a private investigator assigned to DeHart’s case tried to gain access to one of his emails, he found it had been deleted. DeHart also claims that when he was in Bangor, he was stripped naked, had a hood put over his head, was doused with a liquid, and tasered.

DeHart remained in prison for almost two years and was finally released on bond in May of 2012. His parents worried that he was being pressured into a plea deal; he had already been diagnosed with depression and was under a lot of stress, they said. After Aaron Swartz, the famed Internet pioneer and Reddit founder, committed suicide while under indictment for computer fraud and abuse charges, DeHart's family decided to seek asylum in Canada.

According to a Canadian court document given to the DeHart family on Feb. 9 of this year, which was to determine whether or not DeHart would be granted asylum in the country, the child pornography charges didn't contain any “credible or trustworthy evidence.” However, DeHart was denied asylum and deported anyway because the court believed there was enough evidence and that DeHart would have a fair opportunity to defend himself against the charges he faces in the United States.

This story has garnered media attention internationally, with articles from Der Spiegal in Germany and a series of articles run by the National Post in Canada, but little attention in the U.S. with the exception of an opinion article on Al Jazeera America. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange called Canada’s denial of DeHart's attempts to remain in the country “shameful,” and called DeHart's treatment by U.S. authorities “disgusting and wrong.”

DeHart has since joined Edward Snowden and Jeremy Hammond as the third beneficiary of the Courage Foundation, which was founded by Assange. According to the group's website, the Courage Foundation funds and provides legal support for whistleblowers and truth tellers. Since being deported from Canada, DeHart remains in federal custody at Grady County Jail in Chickasha, Oklahoma.

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