Julian Assange's Twitter account reappears after mysteriously vanishing

Julian Assange’s Twitter account is back online, after mysteriously disappearing on Christmas Day.

The WikiLeaks founder has posted several updates since the restoration of his account.

However, none of them explains why it went offline in the first place.

It isn’t clear if it was taken down by Twitter or Assange himself. The Independent has contacted Twitter for clarification.

The account reportedly vanished between midnight and 1am GMT, and appears to have returned in the early afternoon of Christmas Day.

WikiLeaks has not offered an explanation for its disappearance either, but has instead brought attention to a separate incident involving Assange.

While Assange’s account was down and people were trying to work out why, the US Navy posted a strange tweet simply reading “‘Julian Assange’”.

It was swiftly deleted, and the US Navy says it was posted mistakenly.

“This morning, an inadvertent keystroke by an authorized user of the U.S. Navy Office of Information’s Digital Media Engagement Team caused the trending term “Julian Assange” to be tweeted from the Navy’s official Twitter account (@USNavy),” it wrote.

“The inadvertent tweet was briefly posted for a few second before it was quickly deleted by the same authorized user. The inadvertent tweet was sent during routine monitoring of trending topics.”

Wikileaks has since tweeted: “Despite some oddities from the US Navy and Twitter today and increased physical surveillance @JulianAssange’s physical situation at the embassy remains unaltered--confined without charge in violation of two UN rulings requiring the UK to set him free.”