London: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s former ‘right-hand man’, Daniel Domscheit-Berg has claimed that he destroyed 3,500 unpublished files, including the complete US no-fly list and 5 GB of Bank of America documents before leaving the organisation last year.
Domscheit-Berg, who left WikiLeaks last year after a falling out with Assange, made the revelations an interview with Der Spiegel. Along with thousands of files, Domscheit-Berg also took the entire Wikileaks encrypted submission system with him on his way out to start a rival site, OpenLeaks.
In his book released this year, Inside WikiLeaks (review), Domscheit-Berg accused Assange of being autocratic and said the reason he took the submission system and unpublished documents was because “children shouldn`t play with guns”, a newspaper reports.
“We will only return the material to Julian if and when he can prove that he can store the material securely and handle it carefully and responsibly,” Domscheit-Berg writes.
WikiLeaks has labeled Domscheit-Berg’s actions as ‘theft’ and accused him of being in bed with American intelligence agencies.
“The material is irreplaceable and includes substantial information on many issues of public importance, human rights abuses, mass telecommunications interception, banking and the planning of dozens of neo-nazi groups. Our sources have in some cases risked their lives or freedom attempting to convey these disclosures to WikiLeaks and to the public,” WikiLeaks said in a statement.
Domscheit-Berg`s WikiLeaks rival, OpenLeaks, promises to be more transparent than WikiLeaks and route information to media organisations and interest groups instead of publishing material itself.
ANI
