Afghan leak

Afghan leak: Wikileaks' Assange denies 'blood on hands'

Julian Assange says there is no evidence US informants have been harmed

The founder of the website Wikileaks has rejected US claims he has blood on his hands after releasing 90,000 leaked classified documents on the Afghan war.

Julian Assange told the BBC there was no evidence that any informants had died as a result of the leaks.

He accused the Pentagon of trying to distract attention from the thousands of lives being lost in the war.

The White House has appealed to Wikileaks not to publish another 15,000 documents it is thought to hold.

The US denied Mr Assange's assertion that he had asked the US government to help vet the documents to protect lives.

Mr Assange told the BBC's Newshour programme that the US government had presented no evidence that innocent people or informants had been harmed by the leaks.

And he directly addressed comments made by Adm Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who sharply criticised Wikileaks.

"One must consider why the Pentagon is focusing on the hypothetical blood that it says might be on our hands - although there is no evidence of that - compared to the 20,000 lives that have been lost in Afghanistan that are documented and exposed by our material," Mr Assange told the BBC.

'Abuses exposed'

Mr Assange said Wikileaks had sought to engage the White House in its efforts to vet the material before it was released.

He has pledged to continue the release of documents.

Pfc Bradley Manning has been described as a "person of interest" in the Wikileaks Afghan document leak

"We will not be suppressed," he said. "We will continue to expose abuses by this administration and others."

The documents, which Wikileaks has dubbed the Afghan War Diary, were first described in news reports late on Sunday.

Among other revelations, they describe previously unreported civilian deaths, they claim members of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency have backed the Taliban in Afghanistan, and state that the Taliban has used surface-to-air missiles to down coalition aircraft.

On Thursday, Adm Mike Mullen expressed his outrage over the leaks at a press conference.

"Mr Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family," he said.

That was followed on Friday by a plea from White House aide Robert Gibbs for whoever possessed the Afghan files not to release any more.

"It is important that no more damage be done to our national security," he said on NBC's Today show.

Meanwhile, a soldier accused of leaking video of a deadly helicopter attack in Iraq has been transferred to a base in the US.

US Army Pfc Bradley Manning is to stand trial on charges he gave video of the attack - in which a Reuters photographer was killed - to Wikileaks.

The Pentagon is also investigating whether he handed over the 90,000 classified documents.

The army said on Friday that Pfc Manning, 22, had been moved from Kuwait to Quantico Marine Base in Virginia where he will be held pending trial.

The Pentagon has said investigators were extending the helicopter attack video investigation to find out whether Pfc Manning was involved in the leak of the Afghanistan documents. A spokesman described him as a "person of interest".