Famous Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who represented O J Simpson and Mike Tyson, is joining the WikiLeaks legal team, the online organisation said in a tweet.

WikiLeaks, in same tweet, also expressed its concern about an action brought by the US government against Twitter to "disclose the names, dates and locations of all persons who have used its services to receive messages" from Wikileaks or Assange.

"This is an outrageous attack by Obama administration on the privacy and free speech rights of Twitter's customers - many of them American citizens," Assange said.

"More shocking, at this time, is that it amounts to an attack on the right to freedom of association, a freedom that the people of Tunisia and Egypt, for example, spurred on by the information released by Wikileaks, have found so valuable," he added.

Yesterday, a federal judge in Virgina agreed to consider the case brought by US Attorney General Eric Holder.

Lawyers for the three Twitter customers, including Assange, argued that their clients' information is protected by the First Amendment, The Washington Post reported.

The newspaper said that the government has requested personal Twitter information for Assange, Bradley Manning - the Army private who is suspected of supplying classified material to WikiLeaks, Birgitta Jonsdottir- a former WikiLeaks activist who is also a member of Iceland's parliament, computer programmers Rop Gonggrijp, a Dutch citizen, and Jacob Appelbaum, an American.

"It is indeed ironic making this argument here given what's going on in Egypt and the whole idea of politics and the use of social networks like Twitter," defense lawyer John Keker was quoted as saying by The Post.

The government, however, argued that the information they seek - addresses, bank account and credit information and e-mails ? are not related to what was they but is needed as part of their ongoing investigation into WikiLeaks.

"This is a standard request that is used everyday all over the country in criminal investigations," said John S Davis, the government lawyer. .