WikiLeaks just won an important legal battle which will force Iceland’s Visa and MasterCard partner to resume processing donations to the organisation. This comes after transactions headed for the secret-sharing site were blocked in 2010.

Valitor, the Icelandic partner of Visa and MasterCard, lost a court battle with WikiLeaks and must restore service to the controversial site within two weeks or face fines of $6000, per day.

“This is a significant victory against Washington’s attempt to silence WikiLeaks,” reads a statement posted by WikiLeaks and attributed to founder Julian Assange. “We will not be silenced. Economic censorship is censorship. It is wrong. When it’s done outside of the rule of law its doubly wrong.

“One by one those involved in the attempted censorship of WikiLeaks will find themselves on the wrong side of history.”

The Icelandic court ruled that, by blocking credit card donations, contract laws had been violated. The banking blockade, which was set up after WikiLeaks published more than 250 000 American classified diplomatic cables, saw the organisation lose 95% of it donations, at an estimated cost of $20 million.

Last July a European Commission preliminary investigation into the financial blockade was launched and a decision on whether to go after the institutions involved is expected next month.

[Source: Mashable, TwitLonger]