WikiLeaks CableGate: December 23, Day 26

Check and update this page often for the latest news and views on the WikiLeaks saga, as well as our special report.

DECEMBER 23, DAY 26

Fact: WikiLeaks has released 1,896 of the reported 251, 287 U.S. diplomatic cables it claims to have in its possession. That means they have only released slightly less than three-fourths of one percent of the total. They have released 72 new cables since Monday.

[The Guardian] Julian Assange said today that it would be "politically impossible" for Britain to extradite him to the United States, and that the final word on his fate if he were charged with espionage would rest with David Cameron. In an interview with the Guardian in Ellingham Hall, the Norfolk country mansion where he is living under virtual house arrest, the founder of WikiLeaks said it would be difficult for the prime minister to hand him over to the Americans if there was strong support for him from the British people.

[ArmyCourtMartialDefense] A Holiday Message from Bradley Manning:

"I greatly appreciate everyone's support and well wishes during this time. I am also thankful for everything that has been done to aid in my defense. I ask that everyone takes the time to remember those who are separated from their loved ones at this time due to deployment and important missions. Specifically, I am thinking of those that I deployed with and have not seen for the last seven months, and of the staff here at the Quantico Confinement Facility who will be spending their Christmas without their family."

[AP] A Norwegian newspaper says it has obtained the entire trove of 250,000 uncensored U.S. diplomatic documents that WikiLeaks has been distributing. The announcement Thursday appears to make Aftenposten the first media organization outside WikiLeaks' five partners to obtain the material - a development sure to heighten U.S. government fears that the public release of some uncensored diplomatic cables could endanger informants' lives.

[CBS] In a recent interview with MSNBC, Assange dismissed the charges that he is a digital terrorist, and called what he interpreted as cries for his head from people like Huckabee and Palin as nothing more than "another idiot trying to make a name for himself. If we are to have a civil society, you cannot have senior people making calls on national TV to go around the judiciary and illegally murder people," he said. "That is incitement to commit murder."

[Yahoo! News] Julian Assange may be cutting his ties with The Guardian and The New York Times because he doesn't like what they write about him. With Assange now talking up potentially damaging bank documents -- along with reports that he has "personal files of every prisoner in GITMO" -- surely there are plenty of news outlets that would jump in if The Times and Guardian are kept out of the mix because of their coverage of the WikiLeaks chief.

[El Pais] In an editorial explaining his decision to work with WikiLeaks, El Pais Editor Javier Moreno said they believed doing so "has made a contribution to the empowering of voters, and will hopefully strengthen their will to improve our democracy." Moreno went on to say:

"I believe that the global interest sparked by the WikiLeaks papers is mainly due to the simple but very powerful fact that they conclusively reveal the extent to which politicians in the advanced Western democracies have been lying to their citizens. The same could obviously be said of less democratic governments in other parts of the world."

[AP]

The United States and Britain should immediately stop supporting a Bangladeshi anti-crime force blamed for killing hundreds of suspects without trial if there is no visible effort to reform it, a rights group said Thursday. The Rapid Action Battalion, or RAB, was responsible for more than 1,000 extra-judicial slayings in the preceding five years, a 2009 report by Human Rights Watch alleged. The United Kingdom and United States have trained the Bangladeshi force as part of a counterterrorism strategy since at least 2008, leaked U.S. diplomatic cables say.

DECEMBER 22, DAY 25

Fact: WikiLeaks has released 1,862 of the reported 251, 287 U.S. diplomatic cables it claims to have in its possession. That means they have only released slightly less than three-fourths of one percent of the total. They have released 38 new cables since Monday.

[AP] U.N. Checking on WikiLeaks Suspect's Treatment

The United Nations' top anti-torture envoy is looking into a complaint that the Army private suspected of giving classified documents to WikiLeaks has been mistreated in custody, a spokesperson said Wednesday.

[NYTimes] Tensions were rising on Wednesday between Fatah and Hamas, the two main Palestinian political factions, over a leaked American diplomatic cable and ongoing accusations by each side regarding the other's arrests, plans and statements. Gen. Adnan Damiri, spokesman for the security services of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, called a news conference and said that Hamas rockets, rocket launchers and automatic weapons had been found in Ramallah and Nablus. This was evidence, he said, of plans by Hamas to attack fellow Palestinians.

[Bloomberg News] WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said his organization has damning materials about Russia, and now Novaya Gazeta, perhaps the dominant independent Russian newspaper, has unfettered access to them. Novaya Gazeta said on its website that it agreed to join forces with WikiLeaks to expose corruption in Russia.

Click here for more on the WikiLeaks cables, and Julian Assange, from Wednesday and before.