Archive for February 2012
von Hanno Burmester, Stand: 29.02.2012 18:05 Uhr
Wie brisant sind die Wikileaks-Veröffentlichungen?
Die Veröffentlichung interner E-Mails des Unternehmens Stratfor durch Wikileaks stößt auf geteilte Reaktionen. Der texanische Informationsdienstleister Stratfor verurteilte die am Montag begonnene Publikation der Unternehmensdaten scharf. In einer Videobotschaft an Stratfor-Kunden und Abonnenten bewertete der Gründer des Unternehmens, George Friedman, die Wikileaks-Aktion als “illegal” und als “direkt gegen Stratfor gerichtete Attacke”. Hinsichtlich des umstrittenen weltweiten Quellen- und Informantennetzes des Unternehmens versichert Friedman, Stratfor sei hier “den höchsten Standards ethischen und professionellen Verhaltens” verpflichtet.
Zweifel am Umgang mit Quellen und Informanten
Gerade zu Stratfors Umgang mit seinen Quellen und Informanten sind nach der bisherigen Auswertung der Wikileaks-Dokumente jedoch Zweifel angebracht. Stratfor hat Quellen anscheinend mit unseriösen Mitteln abgeschöpft. Interne E-Mails legen nahe, dass sich Mitarbeiter des Unternehmens nicht immer als solche offenbaren. Stratfor-Chef Friedman forderte zum Beispiel eine Analystin per E-Mail auf, einen Informanten “finanziell, sexuell oder psychologisch” abhängig zu machen.
Tim Shorrock, investigativer Journalist und Autor eines Buches über private Nachrichtendienste, äußert sich gegenüber ZAPP kritisch zu solchen Arbeitsmethoden. Die Informationsbeschaffung von Stratfor sehe “offensichtlich nach einer Art der Spionage” aus: “Für mich ist die Frage, wie sich Stratfor-Mitarbeiter nach außen hin zu erkennen geben. Tun sie unter Umständen so, als seien sie Regierungsmitarbeiter oder Journalisten? Wir wissen es nicht.”
Vor diesem Hintergrund kritisiert Shorrock insbesondere die fehlende Kontrolle privater Informationsdienstleister weltweit. Gerade weil private Nachrichtendienste wie Stratfor keinerlei externer Kontrolle unterliegen, könne niemand sagen, mit welchen Mitteln deren Informationen beschafft worden seien – und von welcher Qualität sie sind. Das ist laut Shorrock gerade dann ein Problem, wenn staatliche Stellen Informationen von Privatunternehmen wie Stratfor kaufen. Falsche oder fehlerhafte Analysen könnten nicht vorhersehbare Konsequenzen für das Handeln von Regierungsstellen haben.
Kontrolle gefordert
Sehr kritisch äußert sich der grüne Bundestagsabgeordnete Christian Ströbele, was die Arbeitsweise von Unternehmen wie Stratfor angeht. Als Mitglied des Parlamentarischen Kontrollgremiums hat er tiefe Einblicke in die Arbeitsweise von Nachrichtendiensten. Die privaten Informationsdienstleister könnten mit ihrer Arbeit eine “gleich große Gefahr für die Privatsphäre” der Bürger darstellen wie staatliche Geheimdienste. Deshalb fordert der Parlamentarier gegenüber ZAPP “eine Gesetzesänderung, die die privaten Sicherheitsdienste reguliert”. Zudem sei auch die parlamentarische Kontrolle privater Informationsdienstleister notwendig.
Andere Beobachter schätzen den Neuigkeitswert der Wikileaks-Veröffentlichungen als eher gering ein. So äußerte Frank Rieger, Sprecher des Chaos Computer Clubs, über Twitter, bislang habe “der Stratfor-Leak ja eher Popcorn-Value als Großskandal-Charakter. Bin gespannt was da noch kommt”. Die bislang veröffentlichten E-Mails zeigen laut Rieger einzig “ein Unternehmen voll von Amateuren, die sich als großer Nachrichtendienst aufspielen wollen.”
Der NDR hat als investigativer Kooperationspartner von Wikileaks vorab Einblick in die Stratfor-Datensätze erhalten.
http://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/sendungen/zapp/wikileaks235.html
Le Monde.FR avec AFP | 29.02.12
Les Etats-Unis ont établi “un acte d’accusation secret” contre le cofondateur de WikiLeaks Julian Assange, révèle un courrier électronique de la société américaine de renseignement Stratfor, publié mercredi 29 février par un quotidien australien. Ce courriel du 26 janvier 2011 adressé par le vice-président de Stratfor, Fred Burton, à des analystes de la société, est l’un des cinq millions que WikiLeaks a l’intention de publier dans les prochaines semaines.
“Nous avons un acte d’accusation secret contre Assange”, écrit Fred Burton, un ancien agent du renseignement américain spécialiste du contre-terrorisme, selon le Sydney Morning Herald. Dans le même message, M. Burton intime l’ordre à ses interlocuteurs de garder l’information confidentielle, précise le journal. Read the rest of this entry »
29.02.2012 von Hanno Burmester
Die Internetplattform Wikileaks veröffentlicht interne Dokumente des privaten Nachrichtendienstes Stratfor. Sie geben einen Einblick in die zweifelhafte Arbeit der US-Firma.
Durchblick: Das versprechen private Nachrichtendienste wie Stratfor – und Wikileaks. Bild
BERLIN taz | Im Dezember 2010 veröffentlicht Wikileaks hunderttausende geheimer Diplomaten-Depeschen der amerikanischen Regierung. Die USA sind in Aufruhr. Auch beim texanischen Informationsdienstleister Stratfor schlägt die Empörung hoch. In internen E-Mails lassen Stratfor-Mitarbeiter ihren Emotionen freien Lauf. Julian Assange, der Gründer der Enthüllungsplattform Wikileaks, hasse „Amerika mehr als Osama bin Laden“, heißt es dort. Assange, so ein anderer Mitarbeiter, sei „ein beschissener Idiot“. Sein Kopf solle in „eine volle Toilette getunkt“ werden.
Vor Hintergrund dieser Stimmungslage im Unternehmen berichtet der Vizepräsident von Stratfor, Fred Burton, seinen Kollegen von einem Gespräch mit einem „sehr guten Kontakt beim FBI“. Dem hat er laut einer internen E-Mail indirekt nahegelegt, Assange mit Hilfe gefälschter Vorwürfe gefangen zu nehmen. Die Antwort des FBI-Mitarbeiters, nicht ohne Unterton des Bedauerns: Die amerikanische Verfassung schütze Journalisten wie Assange im Übermaß.
Nachlesen kann man diese Mails nun ausgerechnet wieder bei Wikileaks. Seit Montag veröffentlicht die von Julian Assange gegründete Internetplattform nach und nach eine Auswahl interner Unternehmensdokumente – aus einem Datenpool von rund 5 Millionen Stratfor-E-Mails. In Deutschland hatte der Norddeutsche Rundfunk als investigativer Partner von Wikileaks vor Veröffentlichung dieser Daten Zugang zu den sogenannten „Global Intelligence Files“.
Über die Herkunft der Mails schweigt sich Assange aus. „Wir reden nicht über Quellen“, sagte er bei der Präsentation in London. Ende letzten Jahr war das Unternehmen gehackt worden. Stratfor-Chef George Friedman hatte im Januar eingeräumt, dass Mails gestohlen worden seien. Aktuell nimmt das Unternehmen keine Stellung.
Neben hunderttausenden belanglosen Kollegengespräche finden sich dort auch vollständige Listen mit Quellennamen, Kundendaten und Informantenhinweise auf teils brisante Geschehnisse in allen Ländern der Welt. Die Dokumente geben somit einen Einblick in die Arbeitsweise von privaten Nachrichtendiensten wie Stratfor, die Regierungen und Konzerne mit ihren Einschätzungen beliefern. Read the rest of this entry »
Jennifer Robinson – March 1, 2012
“Indicting Assange represents a dramatic assault on the First Amendment, journalists and the public right to know.” Photo: AP
WikiLeaks’s latest release of confidential emails obtained from the US private intelligence firm Stratfor indicate the US Department of Justice has issued a secret, sealed indictment against Julian Assange. While the Department of Justice has refused to confirm the existence of the Assange indictment – it refuses to comment upon any alleged sealed indictment – the Stratfor email is the best confirmation we have of the long-stated concerns about the risk of Assange’s extradition to the US to face criminal prosecution for his publishing activities with WikiLeaks.
The email was from Fred Burton, Stratfor’s vice-president for counterterrorism and corporate security, and former deputy chief of the Department of State’s counterterrorism division for the Diplomatic Security Service. On Australia Day last year, Burton revealed in internal Stratfor correspondence: ”Not for Pub – We have a sealed indictment on Assange. Pls protect.”
Following the announcement by the US Attorney-General, Eric Holder, of criminal investigation into Assange in December 2010, the US government has refused to give further comment on its plans to prosecute him. The grand jury is secret. Our appeals to military courts for access to the Bradley Manning proceedings were denied. The Australian government has consistently claimed to have no information from the US as to whether they will prosecute Assange and seek his extradition.
Le mail riservate degli analisti di Stratfor rivelano il piano degli Stati Uniti per fare incriminare l’hacker australiano. Ma tra le missive non mancano giudizi durissimi e ipotesi di vendetta nei confronti del leader di WikiLeaks
(29 febbraio 2012) Stratfor nel gennaio 2011 scrive: “abbiamo un atto di incriminazione contro Assange coperto da segreto istruttorio. Questa informazione non deve essere pubblicata”. La mail è inserita nella “secure list”, dove si trovano i messaggi più delicati e che trattano di questioni destinate a non essere pubblicate nei bollettini di Stratfor a cui sono abbonati anche molti giornalisti di tutto il mondo. Dunque gli Stati Uniti sono pronti ad arrestare e processare Julian Assange? Il messaggio è di un boss di Stratfor che ha fonti di altissimo livello nel mondo dell’intelligence e dell’Fbi.
E’ plausibile che questo atto di incriminazione, a distanza di oltre un anno, non sia stato ancora reso pubblico? Sì, è plausibile, perché gli indictiment (atto di incriminazione) a seconda della complessità dell’inchiesta possono rimanere coperti da segreto istruttorio anche per anni. Gli Usa non hanno mai fatto mistero di indagare su Assange e di valutare la possibilità di incriminarlo per spionaggio. Allo stesso tempo, non si vede il modo in cui gli Usa possano incriminare Assange per spionaggio, senza incriminare anche tutti i giornali che lavorano con lui al rilascio dei documenti segreti.
Read More: http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio/dobbiamo-torturare-assange-/2175422
English Translation: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fespresso.repubblica.it%2Fdettaglio%2Fdobbiamo-torturare-assange-%2F2175422
Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (13:15):
I rise to make a few comments on the WikiLeaks publishing organisation and its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange. Although most people probably had not come across WikiLeaks until its stunning series of document releases in 2010, the organisation has been around since 2006. Its key innovation is a secret drop-box where whistleblowers can provide documents to journalists, and the journalists do not necessarily know who the sources are. That is, I think, the key innovation of this organisation-a journalist cannot be hauled into court and forced to disclose who their source is, because they do not know who it is.
WikiLeaks, despite having existed and done valuable work for a number of years, did not really burst into public consciousness until 2010 with the release of a collateral murder video which shows US forces quite casually obliterating a city block, killing a Reuters journalist and his associates and then seriously wounding a number of children who happened to be in a van that drove up to try to clean up and take the bodies out of the combat zone. Subsequently, the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs provided us with a glimpse into the conduct of these wars, one of which Australia is still engaged in. In the Afghan war logs we discovered that there had been 114 incidents of coalition military attacks on civilians. Ninety-one thousand field reports were made public. Many of them are mundane, but many of them also give us an extraordinary insight into how war is fought in the 21st century. Read the rest of this entry »
“If the US take Julian Assange for prosecution, they will take the rights of all Australian citizens with him. It’s time for our government to answer the question posed by WikiLeaks: does our government’s allegiance lie with us, the Australian people, or with the US government?”
Today, Linda Pearson of the Support Assange and WikiLeaks Coalition responded to evidence that the US government plans to charge Julian Assange for his work as Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks.
On Monday 27 February WikiLeaks began releasing the “Global Intelligence Files”: 5.5 million emails from Stratfor, a private US-based intelligence-gathering firm. The firm pays sources in governments and media organisations across the word for information which is then sold on to clients including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency.
“With the release of the Stratfor files, WikiLeaks has again provided a great service to democracy”, Pearson said. “These emails reveal the inner workings of a ‘shadow CIA’ operating without legislative or judicial oversight. They shed light on the extent of privatised spying across the globe.”
As reported in The Age today, on January 26, 2011 Stratfor Vice-President, Fred Burton, wrote in an email sent to Stratfor intelligence analysts: “We have a sealed indictment on Assange.”
The US Department of Justice today refused to comment on whether the indictment exists, but Mr Burton is a former US Chief of Counterterrorism and is known to be well-connected to US intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
“The Australian government must act now to prevent the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States”, responded Pearson. “Prime Minister Gillard must immediately seek confirmation of these reports from the US government. She must state publicly that our government objects to Assange being extradited to the US, under any circumstances.” Read the rest of this entry »
The Government and the Opposition took squirming to new heights today in regards to the threat of prosecution in the USA faced by Australian citizen and WikiLeaks chief, Julian Assange.
Greens communications spokesperson Senator Scott Ludlam asked Labor’s Chris Evans, as the Senator representing the Prime Minister, what the Government knew of the sealed Grand Jury indictment against Mr Assange.
“Either the Government has been kept ignorant by their American allies for thirteen months, or they have been keeping the sealed indictment a secret from the Australian public
“The Government say they are not aware of any charges by the US Government against Mr Assange. Let’s assume, then, that they’ve been kept in the dark for more than a year by Washington, which is hardly reassuring. Read the rest of this entry »
A sealed indictment against Julian Assange would underscore the very thing Wikileaks has been fighting against: abuses the government commits in an environment of secrecy and expansive, reflexive calls for “national security.” From the shocking, inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning, to secret grand jury proceedings, to Stratfor’s apparent knowledge of the existence of a sealed indictment before either Mr. Assange or the American public had such knowledge, the government’s conduct in this case reveals why more transparency, not more secrecy, is essential. This would also mark perhaps the first time a journalist has been prosecuted for allegedly receiving and publishing “classified” documents. Indicting Julian Assange would represent a dramatic assault on the First Amendment, journalists, and the public’s right to know.Rather than promoting transparency as promised, the Obama administration has aggressively pursued whistleblowers and dissenters, launching Espionage Act prosecutions twice as many times as all previous administrations in the last century combined. Attorney General Eric Holder should rethink this dangerous course. Instead of pursuing Julian Assange, Mr. Holder should investigate the serious crimes and abuse of government authority exposed by Wikileaks.
Read the WikiLeaks statement here: http://wikileaks.org/Stratfor-Emails-US-Has-Issued.html
http://www.ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/ccr-condemns-reported-sealed-indictment
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Senator CHRIS EVANS (Western Australia-Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:19):I thank the senator for his question. I obviously cannot comment on unsubstantiated media reports about sealed documents that have been discovered, because, quite frankly, all of that was news to me this morning as well. But I can tell you that the Australian government is not aware of any charges by the US government against Mr Assange. Our embassy in Washington continues to closely monitor developments. Mr Assange remains in the UK, awaiting the outcome of his appeal to the UK Supreme Court regarding his possible extradition to Sweden. We continue to monitor closely Mr Assange’s legal situation and have sought and received assurances from Swedish authorities that he will be accorded due process if he is extradited. While Mr Assange was detained in the UK in 2010, Australian consular officials provided him with a high level of consular support. This remains available to him, as we have advised his lawyers on a number of occasions. I understand that officials were last in contact with Mr Assange’s lawyers in late January 2012.
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Senator Ludlam: I call a point of order, Mr President, on the direct relevance of the minister’s answer. I did not refer to any of the Swedish prosecution matters or anything that is occurring in the UK. My question goes directly to whether the Australian government knows of the existence of a sealed indictment-that is just a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. Read the rest of this entry »
February 29, 2012
The Greens have called on the Federal Government to reveal whether it knew about secret United States charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
An email from staff at private US intelligence agency Stratfor, released by WikiLeaks, refers to an indictment on Assange.
“We have a sealed indictment on Assange,” said the short email from Stratfor’s vice-president of intelligence Fred Burton to analysts at the security firm.
The information comes with the request to protect the information and not to publish.
Greens Senator Scott Ludlam wants Prime Minister Julia Gillard to say whether the Government will defend the 40-year old Australian against possible extradition to the US.
“The Australian Government needs to take a very straight line on this with the Obama administration that we will not permit and we will not tolerate his transfer to the United States to face charges that could potentially land him in prison or in a hole like Guantanamo Bay, as David Hicks did, potentially for decades,” he said. Read the rest of this entry »
Assange Extradition Fight
Assange win would have ‘profound’ effects
- UK court grants Assange extradition appeal (16 Dec 11)
- Assange cleared to continue extradition fight (5 Dec 11)
- Pirate Bay lawyer to take over Assange defence (18 Nov 11)
If the court rejects his case, the 40-year-old Australian will have exhausted all his options in Britain but he could still make a last-ditch appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, prosecutors have said.
The Supreme Court, England’s highest, granted Assange permission to appeal in December.
It said his case raised an issue of “great public importance”, namely whether Sweden’s state prosecutor had the right to sign the European arrest warrant under which he was held.
The case will be considered by seven judges, rather than the usual five.
The Supreme Court usually takes about 10 weeks to deliver a judgement but the parties have requested that this case be speeded up.
Wednesday marks 421 days since the arrest of the former computer hacker, who has been living under tight bail conditions at the country mansion of a wealthy supporter in Norfolk, eastern England.
Assange was arrested in Britain in December 2010 after two women made allegations of sexual molestation and an accusation of rape in Sweden, which he strongly denies.
He says the sex was consensual and claims the allegations are politically motivated, linked to WikiLeaks’ release of hundreds of thousands of classified US files about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as diplomatic cables.
Assange’s extradition to Sweden was initially approved by a lower court in February. An appeal to the High Court was rejected in November, but it subsequently granted him permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.
If this appeal fails, the WikiLeaks founder will have only one other option to stop his extradition — an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
“If the ECHR takes the case then his current bail conditions would remain in force and he would remain in the UK until the proceedings at the ECHR have concluded,” the Crown Prosecution Service said in a commentary on the case.
“If the ECHR declines to take the case then he will be extradited to Sweden as soon as arrangements can be made,” England’s state prosecutor said.
Concerning Assange’s case before the Supreme Court, Julian Knowles, an extradition law specialist with the Matrix Chambers law firm, said the question of whether a public prosecutor was a valid judicial authority had been comprehensively tested.
“The courts have always reached the clear answer that while it may look odd to English eyes … European systems don’t have the same structure,” he was quoted as saying Tuesday in The Guardian newspaper.
“The courts have always said that to make extradition work, you have to be flexible in your approach to what extradition is.”
Were Assange to win, the consequences would be “very profound”, he said.
“It would basically mean, until the law is rewritten, that extradition to Europe (would) become very difficult, if not impossible.
“Because in the vast majority of European extradition requests, the arrest warrant is issued not by a court, as it would be in England, but by a prosecutor.”
Assange announced last week that he was launching his own television chat show and promised interviews with “key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries”.
No guests have been unveiled, but a statement on the WikiLeaks website said the show would go on air in mid March in 10 weekly half-hour episodes.
Russian state television channel RT said it had the rights to show the episodes first.
Formerly known as Russia Today, the English-language channel is funded by the Russian government.
WikiLeaks plans explosive spy leak
- From: AAP
- February 23, 2012 12:36AM
‘Smear campaign’: WikiLeaks is reportedly set to publish cables showing Sweden’s foreign minister has been a US spy for decades, as founder Julian Assange fights extradition to Sweden.Picture: AP Source: AP
WIKILEAKS is planning to release documents revealing that Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is a US spy.
The plan is part of a “smear campaign” to stop Sweden from extraditing founder Julian Assange to the United States, a Swedish daily reports.
The whistleblower website has threatened in an internal memo to publish a so far unknown diplomatic cable “where Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is shown to have been an informant for the United States since the 1970s,” the Expressen tabloid reported on yesterday, saying it had seen the WikiLeaks memo.
Mr Bildt “will have to step down. This will be the end of his political career,” an unnamed person with access to the unpublished diplomatic cable was quoted as saying.
Mr Bildt himself reacted to the report on his official blog yesterday, challenging WikiLeaks to publish “this in their opinion damning report.”
“When that happens, this part of their planned ‘smear campaign’ will quickly fall to shreds,” he wrote.
Mr Assange, an Australian, is currently in Britain fighting extradition to Sweden where he is wanted for questioning on rape and sexual assault allegations, and WikiLeaks has long expressed concern that if he is sent to Sweden, Stockholm would quickly send him on to the US.
Washington is eager to lay hands on the WikiLeaks founder after the organisation’s publication of hundreds of thousands of classified US diplomatic files. According to Expressen, WikiLeak’s “smear campaign” against Sweden would be aimed at blocking Assange’s further extradition.
“Julian Assange will most probably be freed from the sex crime suspicions, because that is just a trap,” the unnamed person with insight into WikiLeaks told Expressen.
“What Assange is afraid of is that he either will be forced to testify in the trial against the arrested soldier and suspected WikiLeaks source (for the leaked diplomatic cables), or that he himself will be arrested and handed over to a US court to be tried for espionage against the United States,” he added.
The cable on Mr Bildt reportedly shows that he first became an informant for the United States in 1973 and his original contact was none other than Republican strategist and former president George W Bush’s political guru Karl Rove.
WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson would meanwhile only confirm that “we have a document that shows the close relationship between Carl Bildt and Washington insiders.”
“I am sure that this information will soon be available to the public,” he told Expressen. Read the rest of this entry »
28.02.2012
Die US-Regierung ist auf den WikiLeaks-Gründer nicht gut zu sprechen, so viel ist sicher. Nun scheint eine geleakte E-Mail zu belegen, dass bereits seit über einem Jahr eine geheime Anklage gegen Assange vorliegt. WikiLeaks nutzt die Gelegenheit, um Spenden einzuwerben.
REUTERS Julian Assange in London: WikiLeaks veröffentlicht E-Mails der US-Firma Stratfor
Hamburg – Die Information über die angebliche Anklage gegen Julian Assange stammt offenbar aus den E-Mails, die dem US-Strategieberatungsunternehmen Stratfor abhanden gekommen sind. Über fünf Millionen Stratfor-Mails sollen WikiLeaks vorliegen, sie stammen vermutlich aus einem Hack der Aktivistengruppe Anonymous. In einer nun veröffentlichten E-Mail, die der der Stratfor-Vizepräsident für “Intelligence”, Fred Burton, an eine hausinterne Mailingliste geschrieben haben soll, ist zu lesen: “Wir haben eine versiegelte Anklageschrift gegen Assange.” Die E-Mail sei markiert mit den Vermerken “bitte schützen” und “Nicht zur Veröffentlichung bestimmt”.
Burton war früher einmal im diplomatischen Sicherheitsdienst des US-Außenministeriums für Terrorabwehr zuständig und gilt als in US-Sicherheitskreisen gut vernetzt. Die zitierte E-Mail soll schon vom 26. Januar 2011 stammen. Seitdem ist viel passiert: Julian Assange kämpft in Großbritannien gegen seine Auslieferung nach Schweden, wo die Staatsanwaltschaft ihn im Zusammenhang mit Vergewaltigungsvorwürfen vernehmen will.
Der US-Soldat Bradley Manning, die angebliche Quelle vieler wichtiger WikiLeaks-Daten, etwa der Irak- und der Afghanistan-Protokolle sowie der Botschaftsdepeschen aus den Beständen des US-Außenministeriums, wird sich demnächst vor einem Kriegsgericht verantworten müssen.
Australische Zeitungen brachen das Embargo
Mannings Fall gilt als zentral auch für die juristischen Anstrengungen von US-Gerichten, Assanges habhaft zu werden. Um ihn in den USA vor Gericht stellen zu können, müsste man Assange nachweisen, dass er Manning zur Herausgabe der Daten überredet oder sich zumindest mit ihm abgestimmt hat – man könnte ihn dann möglicherweise der Verschwörung zum Geheimnisverrat beschuldigen.
Die Veröffentlichung der angeblichen E-Mail kam offenbar früher als eigentlich geplant. Mehrere Medienpartner von WikiLeaks in diversen Ländern rund um den Globus haben Zugriff auf die Stratfor-E-Mails, darunter auch die neuseeländische “Sunday Star-Times”. Die australischen Zeitungen “The Age” und “Sydney Morning Herald” (“SMH”) gehören beide zur gleichen Mediengruppe, Fairfax Media. Beide, “SMH” und “The Age”, hatten am Dienstagnachmittag deutscher Zeit über die Burton-E-Mail berichtet – offenbar entgegen einer Absprache, diese Information noch einige Tage zurückzuhalten. Bei einer Pressekonferenz in London am Montag hatte Assange für die kommenden Tage größere Enthüllungen im Zusammenhang mit den E-Mails angekündigt.
Kurz nach dem Erscheinen der Berichte auf den australischen Websites wurde über den offiziellen Twitter-Account von WikiLeaks verbreitet: “Da Fairfax (SMH, The Age) versehentlich das Embargo zur Assange-Anklage gebrochen hat, steht es nun allen Partnern frei, die Geschichte JETZT zu veröffentlichen.” Parallel wurde die entsprechende E-Mail auf der WikiLeaks-Seite öffentlich gemacht – und zu Spenden für WikiLeaks aufgerufen. Man könne so “unmittelbar auf die Anklage gegen Assange reagieren”, hieß es via Twitter.
http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,818146,00.html
By Stephen C. Webster – Tuesday, February 28, 2012
AUSTIN, TEXAS — The U.S. Department of Justice is refusing to comment on whether it has prepared espionage charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, even after emails allegedly stolen from the Austin, Texas firm Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) and published Tuesday revealed that the company claims to have a sealed indictment against him.
In an email published by WikiLeaks on Tuesday morning, Stratfor vice president Fred Burton writes that his firm has “a sealed indictment on Assange,” and asks subordinates to “Pls protect” the document, which was labeled “Not for Pub[lication].” In another email, Burton suggests that authorities could “lock him up” by having Assange detained as a material witness.
Burton’s email was sent in response to a discussion about reports that U.S. prosecutors have not been able to hang the case against Pvt. Bradley Manning on any direct contact with Assange.
Speaking to Raw Story Tuesday morning, U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Dean Boyd said that they cannot comment “on whether anyone has been charged in a sealed indictment.” Read the rest of this entry »
