WikiLeaks website moves to Switzerland after US clampdown

GENEVA - Whistleblower website WikiLeaks, which is in the middle of releasing confidential diplomatic documents, emigrated Friday to a new Swiss address after its US-based internet hosting service was shut down.

The new hosting is located at www.wikileaks.ch, a site registered by the Swiss Pirate Party.

On late Thursday, the website www.wikileaks.org went down, with the owner of the hosting services saying a denial of service attack had forced it to take the move.

Early last month, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said he feared for his safety and might seek asylum in Switzerland.

According to the Swiss news agency ATS, the group has also reserved for good measure www.wikileaks.li, using a domain allotted to the tiny principality Liechtenstein, nestled between Switzerland and Austria.

Earlier this week, Amazon stopped hosting the site, after coming under fire from members of the US Congress, including Senator Joe Lieberman.

“If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books,” WikiLeaks retorted via its Twitter feed.

The company responded by saying it removed the site because WikiLeaks did not own the content of the leaked US diplomatic cables, and that the group could not have “redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren’t putting innocent people in jeopardy”.

On Nov 28, WikiLeaks began publishing 251,287 US embassy cables, the latest trove of confidential US documents to be made public.