More than 100 demonstrators gathered outside the British Embassy in Madrid tonight to protest at the detention of the founder of the WikiLeaks website and the closing of the site's Swiss bank account.

Skirmishes raged across cyberspace between WikiLeaks supporters and the companies they accuse of trying to stifle the group, with websites on both sides of the battle line taken out of service or choked off by attacks.

MORE cyber attacks in retaliation for attempts to block the WikiLeaks website are likely in a “data war” to protect internet freedom, a representative of one of the groups involved warned last night.

WIKILEAKS has been forced to switch over to a Swiss domain name, wikileaks.ch, after a new round of hacker attacks on its system prompted its American domain name provider to withdraw service.

WikiLeaks’ domain name system provider says it has withdrawn service to the wikileaks.org name after apparent attacks on its website.