Thanks OP for this information. I am just reading about the Assange and Wikileaks saga for the first. This makes a whole lot of sense now, I have always thought Satoshi disappeared because he needed some privacy and probably give room for bitcoin to be used in a decentralized way without him/her/them interfering from time to time.
Now it is clear, Satoshi must be avoiding some sort of pressure from the government and those who weren't in support of the invention as at that time.
No one knows exactly what Satoshi was thinking at the time and why he chose to maintain his privacy. There are many reasons that can be thought of, such as avoiding government pressure or perhaps even imprisonment, as well as a practical application of Bitcoin’s basic idea of privacy and decentralization, or perhaps for other reasons that we do not know.
I sometimes wonder if Satoshi had not chosen to maintain his privacy and hide his identity, what might have happened? We probably would not have seen Bitcoin as it is today.