Julian Assange Is Granted Bail

Julian Assange remained in a London jail Tuesday after prosecutors vowed to appeal a judge's ruling that allowed the WikiLeaks founder to go free on bail if he could post 240,000 GBP, or about $378,000 U.S. dollars.

The bail conditions also require Assange to surrender his passport and wear an electronic monitoring device that tracks his movements. Assange's supporters, including gadfly filmmaker Michael Moore and other celebrities, were scrambling to raise funds to help him come up with the money.

Assange, however, will remain in custody regardless until prosecutors' appeal of the bail ruling is heard.

British prosecutors are acting on behalf of counterparts in Sweden, where Assange is wanted on charges of rape and other sex crimes. Assange has insisted he's not guilty and that the charges are politically motivated.

U.S. authorities are also said to be mulling espionage and other charges against Assange who, through WikiLeaks, provided several major newspapers—including the New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, and Der Spiegel—with excerpts from classified diplomatic documents.

The leaked documents revealed serious concerns within the U.S. diplomatic community about the resolve and trustworthiness of several key allies, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the war on terror.

They also disclosed Saudi Arabia's wish for a U.S. military strike against Iran, and painted unflattering pictures of Western leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The documents also raise questions about whether British authorities released a prisoner jailed in connection with the Lockerbie bombing in order to preserve oil deals with Libya.

Assange's supporters in the hacker community, meanwhile, have been conducting hit-and-run DDOS strikes against companies that have booted WikiLeaks from their networks, including PayPal, MasterCard, and Amazon.