WikiLeaks Founder to Release Thousands of Documents on Lebanon

05/11/2010 The founder of WikiLeaks said on Thursday that WikiLeaks would release thousands of documents this year concerning not only the United States, but other countries including Russia and Lebanon.

Earlier Julian Assange, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks called on the United States to fully examine abuses by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanstan and halt its "aggressive investigation" into WikiLeaks.

He told TSR, a Swiss television station, that he may seek political asylum in Switzerland and move his whistle-blowing website there to operate in safety. His words were dubbed into French.

Assange is in Geneva to speak at the United Nations on Friday, when the U.N. Human Rights Council conducts a review of the human rights record of the United States, Reuters reported.

Last month Sweden rejected an application for a work and residency permit for Assange, who has angered the Pentagon by releasing nearly 500,000 classified files on the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange had been hoping to establish a base in Sweden to take advantage of its strict laws protecting journalists. Assange told TSR the idea of setting up a foundation in neutral Switzerland to operate WikiLeaks was under serious consideration.

Some of the secret U.S. documents released contained accounts of Iraqi forces torturing Iraqi prisoners and the failure of the U.S. military to investigate those instances. "It is time the United States opened up instead of covering up," Assange told a news conference in Geneva.

"The United States is in grave danger of losing its way," said the Australian man.

U.S. officials have said the military had not systematically ignored cases of torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by Iraqi forces. The Obama administration has not announced any investigation into the abuses -- some of which occurred during its first year in office -- unlike Britain and Denmark, which have begun looking into their own troops' behaviour, according to Assange.

"The only investigation to my knowledge that has been announced by the United States is into us, into possible sources within the U.S. military," Assange said.


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