Key Witness Against Julian Assange Lied in Indictment

The Icelandic newspaper Stundin published a report on June 26th summarising an interview conducted with Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, a key witness in the indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. According to Stundin, in the interview Thordarson had “simply admitted to” numerous crimes he had committed in Iceland as well as to fabricating accusations against Assange. Despite Thordarson’s history of criminal activity, including the sexual abuse of minors, and his diagnosed sociopathy, his claims have played an important role in keeping Assange in custody to this day.

Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson had volunteered for Wikileaks in 2010 and 2011. During this time, he repeatedly used his position to enrich himself at the expense of the organisation and its credibility. According to Stundin, his activities and cooperation with a prolific hacker-turned-FBI-informant resulted in denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against Icelandic websites and government institutions in 2011, which were likely conducted by the FBI itself in an attempt to “implicate Julian Assange” in criminal activities beyond his journalistic career.

In the same year, when relations soured between Thordarson and WikiLeaks due to his embezzlement of the organisation’s money, he turned to the FBI to become an informant against Assange. This relationship would last for several months, during which he would simultaneously become a target of Icelandic authorities.

“Charges were piling up against Thordarson … 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,” explains Stundin.

“According to a psychiatric assessment presented to the court Thordarson was diagnosed as a sociopath, incapable of remorse but still criminally culpable for his action. He was assessed to be able to understand the basic difference between right and wrong, he just did not seem to care.”

Thordarson then spent several years in prison, after which he continued his criminal ‘career’. He was contacted by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) who offered him “immunity from any prosecution” in exchange for becoming a witness against Assange. The strategy taken by Trump’s DoJ appointee William Barr was to “prove [Assange] was a criminal rather than a journalist” to strengthen the case against him, in which Thordarson could play a major role.

Stundin continues:

“It is as if [DoJ immunity] had encouraged Thordarson to take bolder steps in crime. He started to fleece individuals and companies on a grander scale than ever. … Thordarson also forged the name of his own lawyer on notices to the Company House registry. … 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.”

Incredibly, during the Stundin interview, Thordarson did not seem to be interested in denying any of these allegations against him. When asked about them, he instead “simply admitted to everything and explained it away as normal business practice.”

Thordarson’s testimony would become a core part of the US Prosecutor’s updated case in the indictment against Assange last year. His testimony, now shown to be fraudulent, contributed to the London judge’s decision to agree with the prosecution on the veracity of Assange’s allegedly criminal past. In January this year, Assange’s extradition was only rejected on “humanitarian” grounds rather than substantive ones, and he remains in UK’s Belmarsh prison pending the US Prosecutor’s appeal of the decision.

Thordarson claims, which he now admits were false, included having supposedly been instructed to “commit computer instructions or hacking in Iceland” on targets including Icelanding members of parliament. He also misrepresented facts about an incident involving an Icelandic bank’s leaked file in order to portray Assange as having been involved in data theft. According to Stundin, all these claims were “reflected in the [London court’s] judgement.”

The Stundin revelations, though having far-reaching implications for Assange and the case against him, have not been reported on by large-corporate media outlets. The Free Speech advocacy website Reclaim The Net called the situation a “media blackout,” while UK media watchdog Media Lens described the lack of ‘mainstream’ media coverage as a “tumbleweed.” In their report, Media Lens quote Caitlin Johnstone:

“Not one major western media outlet outside of Iceland has reported on this massive and entirely legitimate news story. A search brings up coverage by Icelandic media, by Russian media, and by smaller western outlets like Democracy Now, World Socialist Website, Consortium News, Zero Hedge and some others, but as of this writing this story has been completely ignored by all major outlets who are ostensibly responsible for informing the public in the western world.”

On Twitter, the famous US whistleblower Edward Snowden declared that, with the recent Stundin revelations about Thordarson, “This is the end of the case against Julian Assange.” Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who had been key in facilitating the publishing of the information gathered by Snowden in 2013, added: “It should be.”