Under high-tech house arrest,Assange goes on the offensive

When Julian Assange wakes these days,he looks out from a three-story Georgian mansion house overlooking a man-made lake.

When Julian Assange wakes these days,he looks out from a three-story Georgian mansion house overlooking a man-made lake. Under a blanket of snow,the 650-acre Ellingham Hall estate,a mile back from the closest public road,is as tranquil a spot as can be found in eastern England.

But Assange,the WikiLeaks founder,who is fighting accusations of sexual misconduct in Sweden,strolls through this bucolic idyll with an electronic tag on his ankle and a required daily 20-minute drive to the part-time police station in the neighboring town of Beccles. There he signs a register and chats pleasantly with the officers,according to their account,and returns to his curfew at the hall.

It is what Assange has laconically referred to as high-tech house arrest in interviews since arriving from the High Court,where he was granted bail of 370,000,much of it provided by wealthy celebrities and friends,including Vaughan Smith,Ellingham Halls owner.

From his rural redoubt,Assange has gone on a media offensive,continuing to charge that he is the victim of a smear campaign led by the US,which is weighing criminal prosecution for the leaks of nearly 750,000 classified documents.

In an interview with The Times of London on Tuesday,he compared himself to the Martin Luther King Jr,saying that when he was jailed at Wandsworth Prison in London,a black guard handed him a card saying,I only have two heroes in the world,King and you. Assange added,That is representative of 50 percent of people.

Assange also denied prior contact with Bradley Manning,the Army private jailed on charges that he leaked thousands of classified government documents to WikiLeaks. I never heard of the name Bradley Manning before it appeared in the media, he said in an interview on MSNBC on Wednesday.

In the interview,Assange spoke of his feeling of betrayal toward the two women who have said he forced sex on them without a condom,and in one case while the woman,according to her,was asleep. Over the weekend,The Guardian and The New York Times obtained copies of a police document detailing the accusations,leaks he said were clearly designed to undermine his bail arrangements.

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Using Google,he said,and searching for my name and the word rape, there are some 30 million web pages. So this has been a very successful smear. JOHN F BURNS amp; RAVI SOMAIYA