Washington, December 01: Ex-governor of Alaska believes that Julian Assange, who is on the run, should be hunted down like terrorist Osama Bin Laden
Julian Assange branded as “an anti-American operative with blood on his hands” by the prominent Republican Sarah Palin has asked why he has not yet been caught by the authorities.
In an explosive Facebook post, she accused the Obama administration of “incompetence” and a “strange lack of urgency” in not stopping the release of 2,50,000 leaked diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, given that it had already published sensitive information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The former governor of Alaska suggested that “cyber tools” should be used to shut down the whistle-blowing website permanently.
Assange, a 39 year-old Australian former computer hacker who set up WikiLeaks in 2006, has kept out of public view since the release of the first leaked American diplomatic cables on Sunday. He has denied he has blood on his hands.
Assange is the subject of an international arrest warrant over allegations of rape in Sweden.
Palin questioned why the US authorities were not looking for him in the same way that it had hunted suspected terrorists.
“First and foremost, what steps were taken to stop Wikileaks director Julian Assange from distributing this highly sensitive classified material especially after he had already published material not once but twice in the previous months? He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.
His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?”
Palin, who is tipped to run for President in 2012, also said that “serious questions” had to be asked about how the “highly sensitive” memos from intelligence officers could have been uploaded onto a computer memory stick and given to WikiLeaks from a supposedly secure US defence department.
Palin concluded: “We are at war. American soldiers are in Afghanistan fighting to protect our freedoms. They are serious about keeping America safe. It would be great if they could count on their government being equally serious about that vital task.”
Apologies
The Obama administration has said that it “deeply regrets” the leaking of the embarrassing cables that have disclosed exactly what American diplomats think of foreign leaders and promised to take “aggressive steps”
against those who “stole” them.
Prince’s Rant
Prince Andrew slammed British anti-corruption investigators and journalists for getting in the way of trade deals in a diplomatic cable leaked by Wikileaks. US ambassador Tatiana Gfoeller wrote that the prince called the UK and US governments stupid and bemoans the “idiocy” of anti-corruption investigators for nearly scuttling a key trade deal.
——–Agencies