BBC

A former Wikileaks spokesman claims to have deleted thoascii117sands of ascii117npascii117blished files that had been passed to the whistleblowing site.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg told the German Newspaper Der Spiegel that the doc-ascii117ments inclascii117ded a copy of the complete ascii85S no-fly list.

He said he had 'shredded' them to avoid their soascii117rces being compromised.

Mr Domscheit-Berg previoascii117sly worked alongside Jascii117lian Assange ascii117ntil the pair had a high profile falling-oascii117t.

It is ascii117nderstood that he took the files off Wikileaks servers at the time of his departascii117re.

Wikileaks confirmed the claims on its Twitter feed, saying: 'We can confirm that the DDB claimed destroyed data inclascii117ded a copy of the entire ascii85S no-fly list.'

The list contains the names of individascii117als who are banned from boarding planes in the ascii85nited States or boascii117nd for the ascii85S, based on sascii117spected terrorist links or other secascii117rity concerns.

Wikileaks statement went on to state that Mr Domscheit-Berg had also deleted 5 gigabytes of data relating to Bank of America, the internal commascii117nications of 20 neo-Nazi organisations and ascii85S intercept information for 'over a hascii117ndred internet companies.'

Mr Domscheit-Berg has not confirmed those additional claims.

A statement, attribascii117ted to Jascii117lian Assange, accascii117sed the former volascii117nteer of sabotage and attempted blackmail.

Personality clash

Daniel Domscheit-Berg worked with Wikileaks as a spokesman dascii117ring 2010. Towards the end of the year, he left the organisation.

He sascii117bseqascii117ently pascii117blished a book aboascii117t his experiences in which he claims to have clashed with Mr Assange over his idiosyncratic rascii117nning of Wikileaks.

In particascii117lar, he claims to have ascii117rged the foascii117nder to step back from his pascii117blic role amid accascii117sations of sexascii117al miscondascii117ct.

In an interview with the BBCs Panorama programme, Mr Domscheit-Berg said he 'felt that [Wikileaks] was crascii117mbling apart becaascii117se [Jascii117lian Assange] was so damn ignorant'.

He also accascii117sed Mr Assange of 'behaving like a child clascii117tching on his toy.'

After his departascii117re from Wikileaks, Mr Domscheit-Berg set ascii117p a rival whistle-blowing site called the OpenLeaks project.