A website designed to let whistleblowers publish sensitive documents anonymously remains online today despite an American court’s ruling that it must be taken down.

Wikileaks.org, which allows users to publish and discuss documents relating to government or corporate malpractice, is no longer available at its main address, but versions of the site hosted throughout the world are still online. The site can also be seen at its numerical address, http://88.80.13.160, even in the US.

A spokesman for the site said that it would step up efforts to publish documents in response to what it described as repression.

The website, which works in much the same way as the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, allows anyone with information to post it anonymously. Other users could then analyse the information and discuss its reliability and significance.

A Californian district judge ordered its closure on Friday, following legal action taken by a Swiss Bank, Julius Baer & Co, and a subsidiary based in the Cayman Islands.

Under the terms of the injunction, Dynadot, a web hosting company, was told to “clear and remove” links to Wikileaks’ pages and “prevent the domain name from resolving to the Wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank page.”

Although this appears to have been done – that address currently diverts to a page with the message saying that “the site wikileaks.org appears to not exist” – material from the website is still visible on several back-up sites based in other countries.

“In order to deal with Chinese censorship, Wikileaks has many backup sites such as wikileaks.be (Belgium) and wikileaks.de (Germany) which remain active,” a statement posted on the website explained. “Wikileaks never expected to be using the alternative servers to deal with censorship attacks, from, of all places, the United States.”

Accessible versions of the website are currently loading very slowly, which suggests that more people than normal are attempting to read the site.

The website has published what it says are e-mails sent by lawyers acting for Julius Baer & Co after documents relating to the bank’s activities were published on the site in early January.

According to Wikileaks, the lawyers say that the site “promotes, encourages and facilitates the publication and distribution of stolen, illegally and/or tortiously obtained corporate records.” Julius Baer & Co could not immediately be reached for comment.

The injunction blocking access to wikileaks.org will be reviewed at a court hearing on February 29.

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