Tuesday, December 7th, 2010 | Posted by musicking

Julian Assange arrested | WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

Number of View: 18

Julian Assange arrested | WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

Police say WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has surrendered to British police as part of a Swedish sex-crimes investigation, the latest blow to the secret-spilling website that faces legal, financial and security challenges.

Mr. Assange was arrested at 9.30 a.m. (930 GMT) on Tuesday and was due to appear at Westminster Magistrate’s Court later in the day.

The founder of the whistle-blower website, Mr. Assange, has been hiding out at an undisclosed location in Britain since WikiLeaks began publishing hundreds of U.S. diplomatic cables on the Internet last week.

The organisation’s room for manoeuvre is narrowing by the day. It has been battered by web attacks, cut off by Internet service providers and is the subject of a criminal investigation in the U.S., where officials say the release jeopardised national security and diplomatic efforts around the world.

Attack on media freedom

Meanwhile, the spokesman for WikiLeaks said Mr Assange’s arrest is an attack on media freedom and that it won’t prevent the organisation from spilling secrets on the web.

Mr Kristinn Hrafnsson declined to comment on Mr Assange’s state of mind prior to the arrest but confirmed he has been in touch with the 39-year-old Australian over the past 24 hours. He says the arrest will not derail the release of more secret documents.

Mr Hrafnsoon told the AP that “this will not change our operation.”

Source: TheHindu

Other articles you might like;

Posted by musicking on Dec 7 2010. Filed under Breaking News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Leave a Reply

Archives

Recently Added