WikiLeaks server, a "relic of our time", sells for $33,000

The server used by pro-transparency organisation WikiLeaks when it released secret documents in 2010 about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a massive trove of diplomatic cables was sold for $33,000 on Thursday.

Swedish Internet firm Bahnhof, which hosted WikiLeaks at the time, sold the Dell server on online marketplace eBay.

Bahnhof Chief Executive Jon Karlung called the server "a relic of our time" and said the buyer was a non-Swedish national. The data it contained had been erased, Karlung said.

"I believe this box has a very high symbolical value. In a way, it is a kind of artefact, an object that has made a mark on world history."

Karlung said half of the proceeds from the sale would be donated to media freedom advocacy organisation Reporters Without Borders and half to the 5th of July Foundation, an advocacy group for liberty and privacy on the Internet.

The U.S. soldier responsible for passing WikiLeaks the more than 700,000 classified military and diplomatic documents was last month sentenced to 35 years in a military prison for the biggest breach of secret data in the nation's history.

© Thomson Reuters 2013