Wikileaks: We were tipped off by Australian intelligence

Claims to be a victim of smear campaign.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange claims to have received a tip-off by Australian intelligence almost a week before a rape claim was aired - and then dropped - by Swedish authorities.

An arrest warrant for Assange was issued on Saturday before being swiftly withdrawn. A separate investigation into molestation accusations was ongoing.

Wikileaks had previously tweeted that it had been warned to expect "dirty tricks" but did not name the source of that warning.

Assange had since told Al-Jazeera that Wikileaks was tipped off to the allegation by Australian intelligence officials.

"We were warned on the 11th by Australian intelligence that we would expect this sort of thing," he said.

"They had some concerns that we would have something like that.

"Now we have no direct evidence at this stage that this is an intelligence operation or has been influenced by an intelligence operation but certainly there's some surrounding context [that] is disturbing."

Assange said the "only question is who was involved" but stopped short of any direct allegation, citing a lack of direct evidence.

"We can have some suspicions around who would benefit but without direct evidence I would not be willing to make a direct allegation," he said.

Wikileaks recently published secret U.S. military files on Afghanistan and intended to publish more.