Assange attorney: Secret grand jury meeting in Virginia on WikiLeaks

A secret grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, is meeting to consider criminal charges in the WikiLeaks case, an attorney for the site's founder, Julian Assange, told the Al-Jazeera network in an interview.

"We have heard from Swedish authorities there has been a secretly empaneled grand jury in Alexandria ... they are currently investigating this," Mark Stephens told Al-Jazeera's Sir David Frost on Sunday, referring to WikiLeaks. The site, which facilitates the disclosure of secret information, has been slowly releasing a trove of more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables since November 28.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said last week he had authorized "significant" actions related to a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks' publication of the cables, but has declined to elaborate.

Assange is sought for questioning in connection with allegations of sexual assault in Sweden. He surrendered to British authorities last week.

"I think that the Americans are much more interested in terms of the WikiLeaks aspect of this," Stephens told Al-Jazeera. He said it was his understanding that Swedish authorities have said that if Assange is extradited there, "they will defer their interest in him to the Americans ... it does seem to me that what we have here is nothing more than a holding charge." The United States just wants Assange detained, he said, so "ultimately they can get their mitts on him."

"He is entitled under international law, under Swedish law, to know the charges or the investigation that's going on, the allegations made against him and the nature of the evidence which is said to support it," Stephens said. "As I sit here talking to you now, he hasn't that that information, so he's not been able to comprehensively rebut (the allegations)."

Assange is next set to appear in court Tuesday. Stephens said his client is ready to meet with the Swedish prosecutor if she travels to London, but she has not done so.

The legal process could be a long one, he said. "There are a number of issues in this particular case which raise European Convention and human rights points."

Meanwhile, The U.S. House Judiciary Committee plans to hold a hearing on "the Espionage Act and the legal and constitutional issues raised by WikiLeaks," according to its website. More details on the hearing and a witness list had not been posted as of Monday morning.

Before WikiLeaks began posting the cables, Assange wrote to the United States and told them he did not want to imperil any ongoing operations or put anyone at risk, Stephens said. Redactions put in place are not seen to have exposed anyone to risk, he said.

Beside the United States, WikiLeaks has apparently angered Russia and China, Stephens told Al-Jazeera. Russia has accused him of being a CIA operative, according to the attorney, while cyberattacks against WikiLeaks have appeared to come from Russian and Chinese computers. "He does seem to have picked enemies, if you like, with the three major superpowers," Stephens said of Assange.

Last week, supporters of WikiLeaks calling themselves "Anonymous" and "Operation Payback" claimed responsibility for disabling or disrupting the websites of MasterCard, Visa and PayPal. The group tried unsuccessfully to bring down Amazon.com, tweeting on the website Twitter, "We don't have enough forces."

Anonymous made the attacks not through hacking, but by directing a giant traffic surge to the targeted website in a distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack. Such attacks are hard for most websites to defend against, and they can significantly slow or crash a website.

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Reports: Iranian president removes foreign minister

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has removed and replaced Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, state-run Iranian media reported Monday.

Ahmadinejad appointed Ali Akbar Salehi, current nuclear chief and secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, as the interim head of the Foreign Ministry, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

In a letter, the president thanked Mottaki for his service, according to Fars and the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Neither report said why the move was made.

Mottaki has been one of the public faces in the international debate over Iran's nuclear program. Tehran maintains the program exists for peaceful purposes, but the United States and other Western nations have expressed concern that the program's goals are more nefarious.

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Explosion in Pakistan kills school bus driver, injures 2 children

An explosion Monday near a school bus in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar killed the bus driver and injured two children, police said.

Two suspects were detained at the blast site, said Ejaz Khan, a senior police official in Peshawar.

Authorities do not believe the bus was the target of the bomb, which was planted in the road, said Salim Khan, another senior police official in Peshawar.

The explosion occurred in the area of Bhana Marri, Khan said.

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Sweden bomb went off early, authorities say

A bomber who apparently killed himself in central Stockholm on Saturday was probably on his way to a more crowded location, but his bomb went off prematurely, Swedish authorities said Monday.

He sent a warning to a Swedish news agency from his phone shortly before the explosion, said chief prosecutor Thomas Lindstrand, in the first official confirmation of a link between the blast and the warning.

The warning came from a man called Taimour Abdulwahab, the news agency that got the e-mail told CNN Monday.

Lindstrand said authorities were almost certain that he was the bomber, but that authorities have not yet carried out DNA testing or spoken to his family.

A car exploded shortly before Abdulwahab's bomb, injuring two people, in an explosion that police are also linking to him.

No one other than Abdulwahab was killed.

The Swedish Security Service said the incidents appeared to be the work of "a single perpetrator."

He appears to have been acting alone at the time of the explosion, prosecutor Thomas Lindstrand said Monday.

Police believe he had some kind of outside help in preparing the explosives, but they have no additional suspects at the moment, Lindstrand said.

On Sunday, Anders Thornberg of the Swedish Security Police called the explosions "an act of terrorism."

But he said Monday that there was no reason for the public to be worried, and that Sweden was not raising its terror threat level.

The two explosions occurred within minutes of each other Saturday in a district full of Christmas shoppers, Swedish authorities said. Swedish news agency TT and police said they received e-mailed threats 10 minutes before the explosions.

Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt called the explosions "completely unacceptable" as he mounted an impassioned defense of Swedish society in the face of what seems to be its first suicide bombing.

"This is not the path we want to go down," he said Sunday.

"Sweden is an open society," Reinfeldt added. "It is an open society which has demonstrated a will that people must be able to come from different backgrounds, believe in different gods or not believe in any god at all. Be able to live side by side, together, in our open society."

Regional police chief Carin Gotblad said the bomber had "failed."

"While this was a very serious event, no innocent people were seriously hurt. If that was the intention, then the perpetrator failed," she said.

On Sunday night, London's Metropolitan Police searched a property in Bedfordshire, north of London, in connection with the Stockholm probe, a police spokesman said.

The spokesman, who would not give his name, said the warrant was executed under Britain's Terrorism Act 2000 and that "no arrests have been made ... and no hazardous substances have been found."

The writer of the e-mailed threats to the Swedish news agency and police mentioned the presence of Swedish troops in Afghanistan and a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the prophet Mohammed, according to TT, a Swedish news wire that received the threats.

The e-mails contained sound files featuring a person speaking in Swedish and Arabic, TT reported.

About 500 Swedish troops are in Afghanistan, according to NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

The sender referred to Swedish silence regarding the Afghanistan troops and the controversial cartoon by Lars Vilks that depicted Mohammed as having the body of a dog.

"Now your children, daughters and sisters will die like our brothers and sisters and children are dying," the e-mail states, according to TT.

"Our actions will speak for themselves," the person said in an audio recording attached to the e-mail. "As long as you don't end your war against Islam and the humiliation against the prophet and with your stupid support to Lars Vilks the pig."

Thornberg said over the weekend that authorities are working on both intelligence and a normal police investigation and will try to determine "if there may be any more acts of terrorism like this one being planned. At this point, we don't think there are more acts coming, but we can't say for sure."

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