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Wikileaks founder warns of possible war crimes

Other News Materials 26 July 2010 20:03 (UTC +04:00)
The founder of the Wikileaks website, Julian Assange, said on Monday that the huge tranche of leaked classified Afghan war documents his site published appeared to contain details of "war crimes".
Wikileaks founder warns of possible war crimes

The founder of the Wikileaks website, Julian Assange, said on Monday that the huge tranche of leaked classified Afghan war documents his site published appeared to contain details of "war crimes", dpa reported.

Some 92,000 documents relating to the conflict were published by the site, in conjunction with the New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel on Monday.

Assange refused to specify which incidents he was referring to, with the sheer quantity of released information still proving a lot to digest.

Speaking at a press conference in London, he said: "It is up to a court to decide, clearly, whether something is, in the end, a crime."

"That said, prima facie, there does appear to be evidence of war crimes in this material," he added.

Quizzed as to the veracity of the material his site was publishing, he said: "When we publish material, what we say is: the document as we describe it is true."

"The real story of this material is that it's war - it's one damn thing after another," he said.

He also compared the release of the top secret material as comparable to the opening of the Stasi secret police archive in Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Assange also hit back at White House criticism that the publication of the data may put soldiers in harm's way.

"All the material is more than seven months old, so is of no current operational consequence."

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