[ WikiLeaks Founder Surrenders to Authorities – NTD ]
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested Tuesday morning in London where he showed up for a scheduled appointment with the police.
Assange was arrested on an international arrest warrant issued by Sweden, where he is accused of rape and sexual molestation. Assange has been denied bail and will remain in custody until Dec. 14 when the trial for his extradition will begin.
Assange and one of his London-based lawyers, Mark Stephens, have stated that Assange is innocent, and that the allegations are part of a smear campaign against him. They say they will fight the extradition to Sweden, and suspect that Assange might be extradited to the United States from Sweden.
The U.S. State Department (DOS) said on Tuesday that an investigation by the Justice Department into WikiLeaks is ongoing. While the DOS has repeatedly made it clear that it considers the publication of the secret DOS documents by WikiLeaks illegal, department spokesperson Philip Crowley said at the briefing that extradition at this point is “an issue between Britain and Sweden.”
Assange’s arrest is the latest setback for WikiLeaks. The site has been under heavy attack by hackers, forcing it to move to a different Web address and server.
On Tuesday, MasterCard and Visa Europa suspended all payments to WikiLeaks. Last week, PayPal, an international money transfer service, also closed its account. On Monday, Assange’s Swiss bank account was closed, freezing $133,000 in assets, according WikiLeaks.
The bank of the Swiss post office, PostFinance, has come under heavy attack from hackers after it announced it would close Assange’s account. "Since the closure was announced, the website has been inundated and partially immobilized as a result of the many access attempts," said Marc Andrey, spokesperson for PostFinance.
Despite Assange’s arrest, WikiLeaks announced the organization will “continue as planned” with the release of classified U.S. diplomatic cables. On Tuesday it posted 77 new cables to its website.
“We will release more cables tonight as normal," the organization said in a Twitter message.
On Nov. 28, WikiLeaks started releasing a total of 251,287 secret U.S. Embassy cables. To date, 1,060 documents have been published on their website and countless mirror sites.
The move has been strongly condemned by Washington. “The release of this cache of documents puts lives and interests at risk, not just American lives and American interests, but the interests of others around the world,” said Crowley said at a press briefing on Tuesday.
According to Crowley some of the information in the diplomatic cables on critical infrastructure to the United States, released by WikiLeaks on Monday, “is providing a targeting list to a group like al-Qaeda.”
