Pentagon denies role in rape charge against Assange

The Pentagon has termed as 'ridiculous' the notion that its officials were involved in recent rape allegations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Recently, Swedish authorities had issued an arrest warrant against Assange, but they revoked it soon after.

"Any thought that the defence department may be part of such a conspiracy (rape allegations against Assange) is absurd," Pentagon spokesperson Bryan Whitman said, adding, "No. That's ridiculous."

WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website, had recently published thousands of classified Afghan war documents on its website, which the Pentagon says has harmed the lives of thousands of troopers. Earlier, Pentagon had asked WikiLeaks to return all these documents as these are the US army's properties.

The Pentagon, along with the department of justice, is currently probing the incident. News reports had quoted Assange as charging that the allegations were part of a 'smear campaign' after his website posted tens of thousands of classified US military war records. WikiLeaks has an additional 15,000 documents it plans to post, he said.

The spokesperson also demanded that WikiLeaks remove the posted documents, many of which contain the names of US troops and Afghan nationals who support them.

"I think we've made our position very clear, that this stolen property should be returned immediately," Whitman said.

"The information on the web should be taken down. There should be no further posting of any information, and the department is not interested in any sort of minimisation or sanitation exercise," he said.