By Bjartmar Oddur Þeyr Alexandersson and Gunnar Hrafn Jónsson, Stundin.
June 26, 2021 | EDUCATE!
Above Photo: Samsett / Stundin.
A Major Witness In The United States Department Of Justice Case
Against Julian Assange Has Admitted To Fabricating Key Accusations In
The Indictment Against The Wikileaks Founder.
A major witness in the United States Department of Justice case against
Julian Assange has admitted to fabricating key accusations in the indictment
against the Wikileaks founder. The witness, who has a documented history
with sociopathy and has received several convictions for sexual abuse of
minors and wide-ranging financial fraud, made the admission in a newly
published interview in Stundin where he also confessed to having continued
his crime spree whilst working with the Department of Justice and FBI and
receiving a promise of immunity from prosecution.
The man in question, Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, was recruited by US
authorities to build a case against Assange after misleading them to believe
he was previously a close associate of his. In fact he had volunteered on a
limited basis to raise money for Wikileaks in 2010 but was found to have
used that opportunity to embezzle more than $50,000 from the organization.
Julian Assange was visiting Thordarsons home country of Iceland around this
time due to his work with Icelandic media and members of parliament in
preparing the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a press freedom project
that produced a parliamentary resolution supporting whistleblowers and
investigative journalism.
The United States is currently seeking Assanges extradition from the United
Kingdom in order to try him for espionage relating to the release of leaked
classified documents. If convicted, he could face up to 175 years in prison.
The indictment has sparked fears for press freedoms in the United States and
beyond and prompted strong statements in support of Assange from Amnesty
International, Reporters without borders, the editorial staff of the
Washington Post and many others.
US officials presented an updated version of an indictment against him to a
Magistrate court in London last summer. The veracity of the information
contained therein is now directly contradicted by the main witness, whose
testimony it is based on.
No Instruction From Assange
The court documents refer to Mr Thordarson simply as Teenager (a reference
to his youthful appearance rather than true age, he is 28 years old) and
Iceland as NATO Country 1 but make no real effort to hide the identity of
either. They purport to show that Assange instructed Thordarson to commit
computer intrusions or hacking in Iceland.
The aim of this addition to the indictment was apparently to shore up and
support the conspiracy charge against Assange in relation to his
interactions with Chelsea Manning. Those occurred around the same time he
resided in Iceland and the authors of the indictment felt they could
strengthen their case by alleging he was involved in illegal activity there
as well. This activity was said to include attempts to hack into the
computers of members of parliament and record their conversations.
In fact, Thordarson now admits to Stundin that Assange never asked him to
hack or access phone recordings of MPs. His new claim is that he had in fact
received some files from a third party who claimed to have recorded MPs and
had offered to share them with Assange without having any idea what they
actually contained. He claims he never checked the contents of the files or
even if they contained audio recordings as his third party source suggested.
He further admits the claim, that Assange had instructed or asked him to
access computers in order to find any such recordings, is false.
Nonetheless, the tactics employed by US officials appear to have been
successful as can be gleaned from the ruling of Magistrate Court Judge
Vanessa Baraitser on January 4th of this year. Although she ruled against
extradition, she did so purely on humanitarian grounds relating to Assanges
health concerns, suicide risk and the conditions he would face in
confinement in US prisons. With regards to the actual accusations made in
the indictment Baraitser sided with the arguments of the American legal
team, including citing the specific samples from Iceland which are now
seriously called into question.
Other misleading elements can be found in the indictment, and later
reflected in the Magistrates judgement, based on Thordarsons now admitted
lies. One is a reference to Icelandic bank documents. The Magistrate court
judgement reads: It is alleged that Mr. Assange and Teenager failed a joint
attempt to decrypt a file stolen from a NATO country 1 bank.
Thordarson admits to Stundin that this actually refers to a well publicised
event in which an encrypted file was leaked from an Icelandic bank and
assumed to contain information about defaulted loans provided by the
Icelandic Landsbanki. The bank went under in the fall of 2008, along with
almost all other financial institutions in Iceland, and plunged the country
into a severe economic crisis. The file was at this time, in summer of 2010,
shared by many online who attempted to decrypt it for the public interest
purpose of revealing what precipitated the financial crisis. Nothing
supports the claim that this file was even stolen per se, as it was
assumed to have been distributed by whistleblowers from inside the failed
bank.
More deceptive language emerges in the aforementioned judgment where it
states:
he [Assange] used the unauthorized access given to him by a
source, to access a government website of NATO country-1 used to track
police vehicles.
This depiction leaves out an important element, one that Thordarson
clarifies in his interview with Stundin. The login information was in fact
his own and not obtained through any nefarious means. In fact, he now admits
he had been given this access as a matter of routine due to his work as a
first responder while volunteering for a search and rescue team. He also
says Assange never asked for any such access.
Revealing Chat Logs
Thordarson spoke with a journalist from Stundin for several hours as he
prepared a thorough investigative report into his activities that include
never before published chat logs and new documents.
The chat logs were gathered by Thordarson himself and give a comprehensive
picture of his communications whilst he was volunteering for Wikileaks in
2010 and 11. It entails his talks with WikiLeaks staff as well as
unauthorized communications with members of international hacking groups
that he got into contact with via his role as a moderator on an open IRC
WikiLeaks forum, which is a form of live online chat. There is no indication
WikiLeaks staff had any knowledge of Thordarsons contacts with
aforementioned hacking groups, indeed the logs show his clear deception.
The communications there show a pattern where Thordarson is constantly
inflating his position within WikiLeaks, describing himself as chief of
staff, head of communications, No 2 in the organization or responsible for
recruits. In these communications Thordarson frequently asks the hackers to
either access material from Icelandic entities or attack Icelandic websites
with so-called DDoS attacks. These are designed to disable sites and make
them inaccessible but not cause permanent damage to content.
Stundin cannot find any evidence that Thordarson was ever instructed to make
those requests by anyone inside WikiLeaks. Thordarson himself is not even
claiming that, although he explains this as something Assange was aware of
or that he had interpreted it so that this was expected of him. How this
supposed non-verbal communication took place he cannot explain.
Furthermore, he never explained why WikiLeaks would be interested in
attacking any interests in Iceland, especially at such a sensitive time
while they were in the midst of publishing a huge trove of US diplomatic
cables as part of an international media partnership. Assange is not known
to have had any grievances with Icelandic authorities and was in fact
working with members of parliament in updating Icelands freedom of press
laws for the 21st century.
On The FBI Radar
Thordarsons rogue acts were not limited to communications of that nature as
he also admits to Stundin that he set up avenues of communication with
journalists and had media pay for lavish trips abroad where he mispresented
himself as an official representative of WikiLeaks.
He also admits that he stole documents from WikiLeaks staff by copying their
hard drives. Among those were documents from Renata Avila, a lawyer who
worked for the organization and Mr. Assange.
Thordarson continued to step up his illicit activities in the summer of 2011
when he established communication with Sabu, the online moniker of Hector
Xavier Monsegur, a hacker and a member of the rather infamous LulzSec hacker
group. In that effort all indications are that Thordarson was acting alone
without any authorization, let alone urging, from anyone inside WikiLeaks.
What Thordarson did not know at the time was that the FBI had arrested Sabu
in the beginning of June 2011 and threatened him into becoming an informant
and a collaborator for the FBI. Thus, when Thordarson continued his previous
pattern of requesting attacks on Icelandic interests, the FBI knew and saw
an opportunity to implicate Julian Assange.
Later that month a DDoS attack was performed against the websites of several
government institutions.
That deed was done under the watchful eyes of the FBI who must have
authorized the attack or even initiated it, as Sabu was at that point their
man. What followed was an episode where it seems obvious that Icelandic
authorities were fooled into cooperation under false pretenses.
Ögmundur Jónasson was minister of interior at time and as such the political
head of police and prosecution and says of the US activities: They were
trying to use things here [in Iceland] and use people in our country to spin
a web, a cobweb that would catch Julian Assange.
Jónasson recalls that when the FBI first contacted Icelandic authorities on
June 20th 2011 it was to warn Iceland of an imminent and grave threat of
intrusion against government computers. A few days later FBI agents flew to
Iceland and offered formally to assist in thwarting this grave danger. The
offer was accepted and on July 4th a formal rogatory letter was sent to
Iceland to seal the mutual assistance.. Jónasson speculates that already
then the US was laying the groundwork for its ultimate purpose, not to
assist Iceland but entrap Julian Assange:
What I have been pondering ever since is if the spinning of the web had
already started then with the acceptance of the letter rogatory establishing
cooperation that they could use as a pretext for later visits, says
Jónasson.
Icelandic policemen were sent to the US to gather further evidence of this
so-called imminent danger and Jónasson says he does not recall anything of
substance coming out of that visit and no further attacks were made against
Icelandic interests.
But the FBI would return.
Icelandic Officials Deceived By The US
Towards the end of August, Thordarson was being pursued by WikiLeaks staff
who wished to locate the proceeds of online sales of WikiLeaks merchandise.
It emerged Thordarson had instructed the funds be sent to his private bank
account by forging an email in the name of Julian Assange.
Thordarson saw a way out and on August 23d he sent an email to the US
Embassy in Iceland offering information in relation to a criminal
investigation. He was replied to with a call and confirmed that he was
offering to be an informant in the case against Julian Assange.
The prosecutors and FBI were quick in responding and within 48 hrs a private
jet landed in Reykjavik with around eight agents who quickly set up meetings
with Thordarson and with people from the Icelandic State Prosecutors office
and the State Police Commissioner.
Mid day, Mr. Jónasson, then Minister of Interior got wind of this new visit
and requested confirmation that this related to the same case as earlier in
the summer. I asked on what rogatory letter this visit was based and if
this was exactly the same case, Jónasson says in an interview with Stundin.
I then found out that this was of a totally different nature than
previously discussed. He says he put two and two together and said it was
obvious that the intention was to lay a trap in Iceland for Assange and
other staff members of WikiLeaks.
Such actions were according to Jónasson way outside the scope of the
agreement and thus he ordered that all cooperation with the agents be
stopped and that they would be informed they were acting in Iceland without
any authority. Only days later he learned that the agents and prosecutors
had not yet left the country so the Ministry of Foreign Affairs contacted
the US embassy with the demand they halt police work in Iceland and leave
the country.
They did, but left with the new informant and star witness, Sigurdur Ingi
Thordarson who flew with them to Denmark.
Not A Hacker But A Sociopath
Thordarson has been nicknamed Siggi the hacker in Iceland. That is actually
an antonym as several sources Stundin has talked to claim that Thordarsons
computer ability is menial. This is supported by several chat logs and
documents where he is requesting assistance from others doing rather
uncomplicated computer jobs. Once he even sought FBI expert help in
uploading a video from his own phone.
The meeting in Denmark was the first of a few where the FBI enthusiastically
embraced the idea of co-operation with Thordarson. He says they wanted to
know everything about WikiLeaks, including physical security of staff. They
took material he had gathered, including data he had stolen from WikiLeaks
employees and even planned to send him to England with a wire. Thordarson
claimed in interviews he had refused that particular request. It was
probably because he was not welcomed anymore as he knew WikiLeaks people had
found out, or were about to firmly establish, that he had embezzled funds
from the organization.
After months of collaboration the FBI seem to have lost interest. At about
the same time charges were piling up against Thordarson with the Icelandic
authorities for massive fraud, forgeries and theft on the one hand and for
sexual violations against underage boys he had tricked or forced into sexual
acts on the other.
After long investigations Thordarson was sentenced in 2013 and 2014 and
received relatively lenient sentences as the judge took into account that he
changed his plea at court and pleaded guilty to all counts.
According to a psychiatric assessment presented to the court Thordarson was
diagnosed as a sociopath, incapable of remorse but still criminally culpable
for his actions. He was assessed to be able to understand the basic
difference between right and wrong, He just did not seem to care.
Incarceration did not seem to have an intended effect of stopping Thordarson
from continuing his life of crime. It actually took off and expanded in
extent and scope in 2019 when the Trump-era DoJ decided to revisit him,
giving him a formal status as witness in the prosecution against Julian
Assange and granting him immunity in return from any prosecution.
The New York Times Problem
In the month following Assanges arrest in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London
on April 11th 2019 a new rogatory letter arrived in the Ministry of Justice
in Iceland. This time the request was to take a formal statement from
Thordarson in Iceland in the presence of his lawyer. The Ministry had a new
political head at the time, who had limited knowledge of the prior history
of the case.
Although the Department of Justice had spent extreme resources attempting to
build a case against Julian Assange during the Obama presidency, they had
decided against indicting Assange. The main concern was what was called The
New York Times Problem, namely that there was such a difficulty in
distinguishing between WikiLeaks publications and NYT publications of the
same material that going after one party would pose grave First Amendment
concerns.
President Donald Trumps appointed Attorney general William Barr did not
share these concerns, and neither did his Trump-appointed deputy Kellen S.
Dwyer. Barr, who faced severe criticism for politicizing the DoJ on behalf
of the president, got the ball rolling on the Assange case once again. Their
argument was that if they could prove he was a criminal rather than a
journalist the charges would stick, and that was where Thordarsons
testimony would be key.
In May 2019 Thordarson was offered an immunity deal, signed by Dwyer, that
granted him immunity from prosecution based on any information on wrong
doing they had on him. The deal, seen in writing by Stundin, also guarantees
that the DoJ would not share any such information to other prosecutorial or
law enforcement agencies. That would include Icelandic ones, meaning that
the Americans will not share information on crimes he might have committed
threatening Icelandic security interests and the Americans apparently had
plenty of those but had over the years failed to share them with their
Icelandic counterparts.
In any event, Assange has never been suspected of any wrongdoing in Iceland.
Stundin has seen confirmation of this from the District Prosecutor in
Iceland, the Reykjavik Metropolitan Police. Assange has no entry in the LÖKE
database of any police activity linked to an individual collected by the
Icelandic State Police Commissioner from 2009-2021.
Assanges lawyer also inquired in the Icelandic Foreign Ministry if the
points in his updated indictment where Iceland is referred to as NATO
country 1 meant that his case had any relevance to Icelandic membership to
NATO, the bilateral defense agreement between USA and Iceland or any
national security interests. All such connections were dismissed in a reply
from the defense attache at the Ministry.
Immunity And A New Crimespree
According to information obtained by Stundin the immunity deal between DoJ
and Thordarson was presented at the Headquarters of the Reykjavik police
where the only role of the Icelandic policeman was to confirm the identity
of Thordarson before leaving him alone with his lawyer in the back room
where he met the US delegation.
It is as if the offer of immunity, later secured and sealed in a meeting in
DC, had encouraged Thordarson to take bolder steps in crime. He started to
fleece individuals and companies on a grander scale than ever; usually by
either acquiring or forming legal entities he then used to borrow
merchandise, rent luxury cars, even order large quantities of goods from
wholesalers without any intention to pay for these goods and services.
Thordarson also forged the name of his own lawyer on notices to the Company
House registry, falsely claiming to have raised the equity of two companies
to over 800 thousand US dollars. The aim was to use these entities with
solid financial positions on paper in a real estate venture.
The lawyer has reported the forgery to the police where other similar cases,
along with multiple other reports of theft and trickery, are now piling up.
When confronted with evidence of all these crimes by a Stundin journalist he
simply admitted to everything and explained it away as normal business
practice. He has not yet been charged and is still practicing this
business. Local newspaper DV reported last week that Thordarson had
attempted to order merchandise on credit using a new company name, Icelandic
Vermin Control. Despite using a fake name and a COVID face mask he was
identified and the transaction was stopped. He was last seen speeding away
in a white Tesla, according to DV.