(Our inteligence agencies hard at work - gd)
LONDON — Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks Web site who is embroiled in a fight with the Pentagon over the disclosure of secret military documents, was caught up in a new drama on Saturday when Swedish prosecutors sought him for questioning on allegations of rape and molestation — and then announced the rape allegation was unfounded.
The abrupt reversal marked another strange twist to Mr. Assange’s already complicated tale. A 39-year-old former computer hacker from Australia, Mr. Assange has become ever more elusive in recent weeks as the Obama administration hinted it might prosecute him for releasing about 77,000 classified Afghan war documents on the Internet last month. His confrontation with the administration has grown only more bitter as he warned that the organization would soon release 15,000 more documents.
Using Skype and Twitter to communicate, Mr. Assange has expressed increased worries that the United States might try to stop his work, which is dedicated to exposing government and corporate secrets. Defending himself against the Swedish allegations on Saturday in Twitter feeds, he said that the accusations were “without basis” and implied that they were payback for his disclosures: “We were warned to expect ‘dirty tricks.’ Now we have the first one.”
The bizarre episode in Sweden on Saturday left more questions than answers, and it raised doubts about Mr. Assange’s apparent strategy to make Sweden a new permanent home for himself and WikiLeaks because of the country’s strong press freedom laws that he hoped would offer protection against legal actions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/world/europe/22wikileaks.html?th&emc=th