WikiLeaks founder says he had been warned over 'dirty tricks'

THE founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks has dismissed sexual abuse allegations and said he feared he could be the victim of a Pentagon smear campaign.

Authorities in Sweden had issued a warrant for the arrest of Julian Assange, 39, on Friday after two women accused him of sexual assault, but withdrew it a day later. Assange remains under suspicion of a lesser crime of molestation.

However, yesterday Assange - who enraged the US last month by publishing 90,000 secret military documents about the Afghan war, including evidence that coalition forces killed hundreds of civilians in incidents that have never been reported - said that he had been warned about a potential plot to blacken his name.

In a post on micro-blogging website Twitter, he called the allegations "without basis". He also questioned the motives behind them during an interview with a Swedish newspaper.

Aftonbladet quoted him as saying the allegations had caused damage even though the rape suspicion was dropped, because WikiLeaks' "enemies" could use them to discredit the site.

"I don't know who's behind this but we have been warned that, for example, the Pentagon plans to use dirty tricks to spoil things for us," he said. "I have also been warned about sex traps."

Assange rejected the molestation accusation and said he has never - in Sweden or elsewhere - "had sex with anyone without the full consent of both parties".

However, Swedish prosecutors last night defended their handling of the rape allegation. They insisted they had made no mistakes in issuing an arrest warrant and withdrawing it less than a day later.

The Swedish Prosecution Authority said an "on-call" prosecutor issued the warrant late on Friday, only to see it revoked the next day by a higher-ranked prosecutor who found no grounds to suspect him of rape.

Karin Rosander, a spokeswoman for the authority, said: "The prosecutor who took over the case yesterday had more information, and that is why she made a different assessment than the on-call prosecutor."

She declined to specify what the new material was, but said there was "absolutely nothing" that suggested errors had been made by either prosecutor.

Assange was in Sweden last week seeking legal protection for the website.

WikiLeaks is preparing to release a fresh batch of classified US documents from the Afghan war, despite warnings from the Pentagon that they could endanger American soldiers and their Afghan helpers.

Assange, an Australian, remains under suspicion of a lesser crime of molestation, which would not lead to an arrest warrant. Molestation covers a wide of range of offences under Swedish law, including inappropriate physical contact with another adult, and can result in fines or up to one year in prison.

Kristinn Hrafnsson, a Wiki-Leaks spokesman in Iceland, called the sequence of events related to the arrest warrant too "remarkable" to rule out ulterior motives.

"It is such an unbelievable unfolding of events that it would be unnatural not to consider that there is something behind it," he said.