WikiLeaks Founder Urges Government To Examine Abuses

By: Mary Smith
11/04/2010 11:05 AM ET

WikiLeaks Founder Urges Government To Examine Abuses – The founder of WikiLeaks called on the United States on Thursday to fully examine abuses by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and to halt its “aggressive investigation” into his whistle-blowing organization.

Julian Assange said WikiLeaks would release thousands of documents this year concerning not only the United States, but other countries including Russia and Lebanon.

It has made public nearly 500,000 classified U.S. files on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, drawing ire from the Pentagon. Some U.S. secret documents 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 on the eve of an examination by the U.N. Human Rights Council of the overall U.S. record.

“The United States is in grave danger of losing its way,” said the Australian, who is moving from country to country to seek protection through their whistleblower laws.

The U.S. delegation has said it is open to fair criticism of its human rights record, including racial discrimination and counterterrorism policies, at Friday’s debate, where Muslim countries are expected to voice concern about detainee abuse.

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’ behavior, 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.