Assange `no criminal` but `attention seeker of worst kind`: Howard

Melbourne: Former Australian prime minister John Howard has reportedly called WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange ``an attention seeker of the worst kind``.

However, Howard is not sure whether Assange is guilty of a crime but insists that he is not a hero, Herald Sun reports. Assange has been given political asylum by the Ecuadorean Embassy and he has been holed up there for almost a year. Recently, Assange had claimed that he will not leave the embassy even if Sweden drops the sexual assault charges against him as US might still prosecute him for violating the Espionage Act. Meanwhile, former Labour Cabinet minister, Gareth Evans, has praised WikiLeaks for publishing classified footage of a US airstrike from an Apache helicopter that killed 18 people including two Reuters journalists in 2007. However, Evans criticised WikiLeaks for being indifferent to the implications of publishing such reports on intelligence and security operations adding that the revelations appear to be more sort of an ego trip than serious contribution to international public policy, the report added. ANI