GENEVA The founder of the group WikiLeaks urged US authorities Thursday to probe possible rights abuses in Afghanistan and Iraq instead of focusing on tracking down who leaked that information to his group.
Australian-born Julian Assange said the US hadn't opened any probes into the alleged incidents detailed in secret documents published by WikiLeaks since the group began putting them online in July.
“It is time the United States opened up instead of covering up,” he told reporters near the UN European headquarters in Geneva, where on Friday the US will face its first comprehensive human rights review by the global body.
Officials at the US mission in Geneva declined to immediately comment, but Pentagon officials have previously called the leaking of secret documents a threat to US national security.
Assange said he hoped US officials would take seriously the criticisms they are likely to hear in the UN's Human Rights Council on Friday, when other nations will be highlighting perceived faults in Washington's domestic and foreign record.
The United States “has the opportunity to show to itself and show to the rest of the world that it is a responsive government,” he said.
Following the recent publication by WikiLeaks of nearly 400,000 field reports by American soldiers in Iraq, the UN's top human rights official said the US and Iraq should prosecute anyone believed responsible for torture, unlawful killings and other abuses.
Assange noted that Britain and Denmark had already taken some steps to examine possible wrongdoing from the leaked US war logs.
Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said any allegations of abuse by British troops “are extremely serious and need to be looked at.” He stopped short of calling for an official investigation.
Denmark's Defense Command says it is looking into allegations of possible wrongdoing by Danish forces in southern Iraq, where they were under British command. Denmark's left-leaning newspaper Information said the WikiLeaks documents showed that Iraqi prisoners handed over to Iraqi security forces by Danish forces were later ill-treated.
Assange said his group now devotes 70 percent of its resources to defending itself from attacks against its collaborators and its financial infrastructure, which he said were “mostly by the US military and US intelligence.”
“We have never faced such difficulties as an organization as in the past three months,” he told reporters, flanked by two bodyguards.
Assange said future leaks would cover other countries as well as the United States. — AP
