‘Assange bringing WikiLeaks down’

LONDON - One of beleaguered WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s main supporters has accused him of bringing the whistleblower website down and asked him to surrender to Swedish authorities, a media report said Thursday.

Peter Sunde, co-founder of file-sharing website Pirate Bay, said the media glare focussed on Assange was detracting from the work being done on WikiLeaks, the Daily Mail reported.

It comes after a Norwegian news service claimed to have obtained unrestricted access to all the secret diplomatic cables being held by WikiLeaks.

Assange, whose website has been steadily leaking the cables over the last few months, will be forced to pay attention to Sunde’s comments as his micropayment site Flattr.com is a main source of finance.

WikiLeaks has received more than 5,000 donations of up to 10 euros through the site, The Times has reported.

That figure is believed to have increased dramatically after companies including MasterCard, Visa and PayPal blocked payments to the site.

“I think it’s very important that Julian Assange comes to Sweden and has his trial in Sweden to show if he’s guilty or innocent,” Sunde told The Times.

“At the moment he’s dragging WikiLeaks down with him.”

“There’s been far too much focus on Julian as an individual, which distracts the world from WikiLeaks, which has a far higher purpose than one person.”

Assange, 39, is being held at Ellingham Hall in Norfolk in England as part of his bail conditions as he fights extradition to Sweden on sex assault charges.

He has said the case would “probably” be dropped because of “careful scrutiny”. He also said he has received death threats since his release from prison.

He warned that if he was extradited to Sweden, British government websites could face attack from hackers.

Norway’s Aftenposten service told business newspaper Dagens Naerings that it had secured possession of the cables, but did not reveal who had leaked them from inside WikiLeaks.

Until now, around 2,000 of the 250,000 cables have been released through WikiLeaks’ media partners, including the New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel newspapers.