Assange wikileaks founder free on bail

LONDON: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, arrested in Britain on Swedish allegations of sex crimes, was freed on bail by a British court on Tuesday.

Judge Howard Riddle granted him bail with conditions until another hearing on Jan. 11.

The 39-year-old Australian, whose website has provoked US fury by publishing some of a trove of 250,000 classified US diplomatic papers, was accused this year of sexual misconduct by two female Swedish WikiLeaks volunteers during a stay in Sweden.

Assange denies the allegations and is fighting Swedish attempts to extradite him.

US alerted Pakistan, Afghanistan about military leaks

WASHINGTON: The United States said Monday it had alerted the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan when it learned thousands of secret military files about the Afghan war were to be published by the media.

"Over the weekend, as we had been contacted by media representatives and anticipated this story coming out, at high levels we gave an alert to President 
Karzai, to President Zardari," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said.

Crowley was referring to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan. The foreign ministries of both countries were also informed, he said.

"We wanted to make sure they understood the context under which these documents would be released, that this was the result of a leak of classified documents, not sanctioned, authorized by the United States government," he said.

The notifications were "to help them understand that this represents a crime and that we are investigating," Crowley said.

He said the US ambassador in Islamabad, Anne Patterson, and the US ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, were involved in the notification of the leaks, as was Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff who was visiting the region.

Crowley said the government of India was also informed about the leaks.

In all, some 92,000 documents dating from 2004 to 2009 were released by the whistleblowers' website Wikileaks to the New York Times, Britain's Guardian newspaper and Germany's Der Spiegel news weekly.

The most controversial allegations center around claims that Pakistan, a key US ally in the turbulent region, allows its spies to meet directly with the Taliban.

According to the Times, Pakistan agents and Taliban representatives meet regularly "in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders."

The leaks also documented the deaths of innocent civilians.