WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could step down: Report

The New York Observer has learned this morning that the high-profile Australian whistleblower behind the document leaks website WikiLeaks could be stepping down. The rumors follow allegations of rape, and the paper suggests that this may be reason for a departure until all investigations by Swedish police have been cleared up.

An Icelandic parliamentarian told The Daily Beast that Assange should step down, at least until the allegations have lost momentum.

"I am not angry with Julian, but this is a situation that has clearly gotten out of hand," she said told a reporter. "These personal matters should have nothing to do with WikiLeaks. I have strongly urged him to focus on the legalities that he's dealing with and let some other people carry the torch."

An anonymous source has told the parliamentarian, known as Birgitta Jonsdottir, that Assange has been 'resisting hints from supporters of the site's mission that he step aside' and that recent site outages have merely been attempts at sending him a message.

According to the New York Observer:

Birgitta Jonsdottir may want Assange to step away as point man for Wikileaks, but she seemed to understand how the accusations against the Australian-born hacker could have resulted from a sort of cultural miscommunication. Assange is brilliant, said Jonsdottir, "but he doesn't have very good social skills."

[Via The New York Observer] 

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Julian Assange: I was smeared, women stick by molestation charges

The high profile whistleblower behind the controversial website WikiLeaks has spoken out against a group of women who claimed they were raped by him, the Wall Street Journal reports.

It is clearly a smear campaign," Julian Assange told Al-Jazeera yesterday. "The only question is, who was involved?"

One of the two women claim that consensual sex with the internet icon turned abusive, although it was never rape. "The accusations against Assange are not staged by either the Pentagon nor anyone else," the accuser told a Swedish newspaper. "The responsibility for what happened to me and the other girl are with a man with a disturbed view of women and problems accepting a no.

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