PayPal Cancels WikiLeaks Donation Account

WikiLeaks takes more hit every day almost a week after the publishing of the controversial U.S. diplomatic cables that stirred a lot of commotion throughout the entire world.

The first to ban WikiLeaks from its servers was the famous retailer Amazon.com, which drew a lot of criticism and boycott almost immediately after the announcement of the ban.

Then, on Friday, the site was shut down by the domain names provider EveryDNS.net, which argued that by attracting a lot of cyber attacks, WikiLeaks placed some 500,000 users at risk, thus breaking the terms of agreement.

WikiLeaks went back on a few hours later in Switzerland, where the founder of the site, Julian Assange, had intended to apply for personal sanctuary a few months back.

In a Q & A session Assange accused on Friday the Australian PM Julia Gillard of betraying him as an Australian citizen, and of conspiring with the American authorities to prejudice him.

On Saturday, the website received another blow as the online payment service provider PayPal cancelled the account WikiLeaks was using for donations.

PayPal motivated in a blog post its decision by an infringement of the company’s policy that no money that is being carried through its system should be used for illegal activities.

Thus, donating money for WikiLeaks was no longer available by means of PayPal, thus crippling the organization of its most secure and convenient way to support it.

WikiLeaks still retains some ways of receiving funds: an Australian mail office box; bank accounts in Germany, Switzerland and Iceland, and a credit card processing partner in Switzerland.

WikiLeaks site could be reached on Saturday at wikileaks.de, and the Swiss address directs traffic to servers on France, where the pressure mounted almost instantaneously against hosting a site that is “violating the secrets of diplomatic relations.”

Alongside with these Internet attacks and threats to his life (a Canadian professor, Tom Flanagan, called for his assassination, while a former Republican president hopeful asked for his execution), Assange is facing criminal charges in Sweden, where the case of rape was reopened by the authorities.

In a poll on the Internet people were requested to answer the question: “Did Assange violate the 1917 Espionage Act?”

So far, 60.81 of the respondents (706 clicks) are in favor of the idea that he did, while 39.19% (455 clicks) are against.

BBC reports that Ecuador volunteered to offer Assange sanctuary.