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2:55 AM
zimbio
The renowned Australian hacker who founded the electronic whistleblowers' platform WikiLeaks, vanished when a young US intelligence analyst in Baghdad was arrested.
The analyst, Bradley Manning, had bragged about sending 260,000 incendiary US state department cables on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. The prospect of the cache of classified intelligence on the US conduct of the two wars being put online is a nightmare for Washington. The sensitivity of the information has generated media reports that Assange is the target of a US manhunt.
" Julian Assange told the Guardian in Brussels. "Politically it would be a great error for them to act. I feel perfectly safe … but I have been advised by my lawyers not to travel to the US during this period."
Assange appeared in public in Brussels for the first time in almost a month to speak at a seminar on freedom of information at the European parliament.
He said he had collected 260,000 top secret US cables in Baghdad and sent them to WikiLeaks, whose server operates out of Sweden.
WikiLeaks released a film of a US Apache helicopter attack on civilians in Baghdad. It has also posted a confidential state department cable on negotiations in Reykjavik over Iceland's financial collapse and is preparing to disclose much more material, including film of a US attack that left scores of civilians dead in Afghanistan.
"We'd like to know where he is – we'd like his co-operation in this," a US official was quoted as saying.
Regarding his own predicament, Assange said the US state department had signaled it was not seeking any WikiLeaks people because the Pentagon's criminal investigations command had assumed the lead role in the case.
Apart from preparing much more material for release, WikiLeaks is planning to publicise a secret US military video of one of its deadliest air strikes in Afghanistan in which scores of children are believed to have been killed in May last year.
The Afghan government said about 140 civilians were killed in Garani, including 92 children. The US military initially said that up to 95 died, of whom about 65 were insurgents.
US officials have since wavered on that claim. A subsequent investigation admitted mistakes were made.
In April WikiLeaks released the Baghdad video, prompting considerable criticism of the Pentagon.
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