Wikileaks founder comes out of shadows

He is the scarlet Pimpernel of cyberspace whose website has been responsible for some of the most explosive scoops in recent years. But ever since an American soldier was arrested for allegedly leaking video footage of an Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has stayed out of the spotlight.

Last night, however, the Australian-born former hacker turned scourge of the Pentagon was due to make his first public appearance in Britain since it emerged that US investigators want to question him about reports that his organisation had been handed sensitive information by the source thought to be behind the Apache video.

The tape showed pilots laughing after killing a group of Iraqis, which included two Reuters journalists.

Mr Assange was due to give a speech to the Centre for Investigative Journalism at City University in London last night in what is understood to be only his second public appearance since one of Wikileaks' alleged sources was arrested.

Earlier this week, the man accused of leaking the Apache video was finally charged by US military investigators after being held for weeks in Kuwait. Private First Class Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old army intelligence analyst who was working in Iraq with high-level security clearance, was arrested after an American journalist and former hacker reported him to the authorities.

Adrian Lamo, who was once charged for hacking into computer networks belonging to The New York Times, Yahoo! News and Microsoft, had been chatting with Pte Manning over the internet following the release in April of the Apache video.

During their conversations the intelligence analyst allegedly boasted that he had been the original source of the Apache footage and had also handed Wikileaks more than 260,000 classified documents from US embassies in the Middle East.

In a move that was widely criticised by Wikileaks, Mr Lamo - who now works as a journalist - reported Mr Manning to the FBI and tipped off Wired magazine about the story. Mr Lamo defended his actions by saying he felt compelled to alert the authorities and that he was not acting as a journalist when he spoke to Mr Manning.

The potential existence of thousands of diplomatic cables has caused concern to State Department officials and, if published, could embarrass allies in a volatile area of the world.

Wikileaks, which is nominally hosted in Sweden, goes to immense lengths to protect its sources by masking any leaks to its website through a series of routers around the world. The website has never publicly confirmed whether Mr Manning did give them the Apache video.

Mr Assange has also said he is unaware of the diplomatic cables but his lawyers have advised Mr Assange against travelling to the US, fearing that he is now a potential suspect in the ongoing investigation into Mr Manning.

In the past few years Wikileaks has carved itself a niche as one of the most extensive and safest platforms for whistleblowers to leak to, bypassing journalists by getting previously hidden information straight into the public domain.

It has broken reams of international stories but few have created as many shockwaves as the Apache video, which gave the public an insight into how the US army's official narrative of the Baghdad attack was markedly different from what unfolded on film.

The video footage, which was dubbed "Collateral Murder" by Wikileaks, shows the two pilots firing armour-piercing, high-explosive 30mm rounds at a group of Iraqis. When a van pulls up to help the injured it is also attacked and destroyed, killing the remaining people on the ground and injuring two children in the front of the vehicle.

Wikileaks, a primarily voluntary organisation of 800 loosely affiliated supporters and financial backers, is now working on a potentially even more explosive video. It reportedly shows footage of an airstrike on the Afghan village of Garani in May 2009 in which 140 civilians died, including 92 children.

It is not known whether the Garani footage had been leaked through Mr Manning or through an entirely separate source.

- INDEPENDENT