Christine Assange (the mother of Julian Assange) said she was "reacting as any mother would" and was concerned about her son's wellbeing.
"A lot of stuff that is written about me and Julian is untrue," she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from her home on Queensland's Sunshine Coast.
Julian Assange, who is Australian, is facing an arrest as Interpol has issued a Red Notice in his name. However, his whereabouts are not known. He was said to be at a secret location somewhere outside London, along with fellow hackers and WikiLeaks enthusiasts.
The global police agency seeks to arrest the WikiLeaks owner for suspected sex crimes just two days after his website started publishing some 250,000 highly embarrassing diplomatic cables.
Interpol's involvement comes after the Swedish authorities issued their own international warrants last month.
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Meantime, Assange regarded the move as ridiculous saying it “appears to be highly irregular and some kind of legal circus.” Besides, attorneys for Assange reported that he has already cooperated with Swedish investigators and is willing to continue doing so. On Tuesday, they appealed to Sweden's Supreme Court to overturn an earlier ruling that he be detained for questioning.
Assange strongly denies any wrongdoing but admits having unprotected but consensual encounters with two women during a visit to Sweden in August.
Assange's reluctance to emerge in public is understandable. It comes amid a rapid narrowing of his options. Several countries are currently either taking – or actively considering – aggressive legal moves against him. This lengthening list includes Sweden, Australia and now the US – but so far as can be made out, not Britain.
In reality, Assange's predicament may not be as hopeless as it seems. The US would be hard pressed to make charges against him stick, experts suggest.
"There have been so few cases under the Espionage Act, you can put them on one hand," said David Banisar, senior legal counsel for the campaigning group Article 19 and an expert on free speech in the US. "There is the practical problem that most of the information published by WikiLeaks wasn't secret. Then there is the debate about whether the documents were properly classified – there are detailed rules in the US about what can and cannot be classified."
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