Police probe clears WikiLeaks ‘cablegate’ of breaking Australian criminal laws

MELBOURNE - The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has given a clean chit to whistleblower website WikiLeaks, which was under investigation over the leaking of a cache of confidential U.S. diplomatic cables.

Attorney General Rob McClelland had directed the AFP to examine “the matter relating to the publishing of US embassy cables containing classified information on the WikiLeaks website”.

It had come after an overview of the cables provided by Wikileaks showed that 1442 documents mentioned Australia, and nearly 1000 documents originated at the US embassy in Canberra.

Of the 933 cables from the Canberra embassy, 470 are marked “unclassified”, 385 “confidential” and 79 “secret”.

The AFP today said that, based on the information available to date, it has not identified any criminal offences where Australia has jurisdiction.

“The AFP examined material relevant to potential Australian offences to determine whether an official investigation was warranted,” News.com.au quoted an AFP statement, as saying.

“The AFP has completed its evaluation of the material available and has not established the existence of any criminal offences where Australia would have jurisdiction.”

“Where additional cables are published and criminal offences are suspected, these matters should be referred to the AFP for evaluation,” it added.

WikiLeaks has previously published tens of thousands of documents detailing the U.S. handlings of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Pentagon has even claimed that WikiLeaks has put U.S. and allied soldiers in danger.

Julian Assange, who founded the whistleblower website in 2006, is regarded as a digital folk hero by many and a dangerous menace by the American government.

Before working with the website, the 39-year-old Australian was a physics and mathematics student, hacker, and computer programmer. (ANI)