Key witness against Assange admits to lying in exchange for US immunity
Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson, a convicted criminal from Iceland, has admitted that the main allegations he made against Julian Assange, which form a central component of the US indictment against the WikiLeaks founder, were lies proffered in exchange for immunity from American prosecution.
The revelation, contained in an extensive article by
Stundin, a well-known Icelandic biweekly, is dramatic confirmation that the US
attempt to prosecute Assange is a criminal enterprise.
It again demonstrates that the American Espionage Act
charges against Assange, and the proceedings for his extradition from Britain
to the US, are a pseudo-legal cover for an extraordinary rendition. In this
operation, the US Justice Department has collaborated with individuals whom it
knows to be criminals, in the concoction of a fabricated indictment that was
then submitted to the British courts.
In June 2020, US prosecutors issued a new superseding
indictment against Assange, months after the first week of British court
hearings for his extradition.
The document contained the existing 17 Espionage Act charges
against Assange, over WikiLeaks 2010 and 2011 publication of US army war logs
from Iraq and Afghanistan and hundreds of thousands of American diplomatic
cables. Leaked by the courageous whistleblower Chelsea Manning, the material
included evidence of widespread war crimes, as well as the intrigues and
conspiracies of American imperialism on a world scale.
The June indictment did not contain additional charges. It
was a transparent effort to bolster the 18th count against Assange, which
accuses him of attempted computer intrusion in league with Manning. In the
January 2020 British court hearings, that charge had been demolished by defence
evidence, showing that Assange and Manning had not hacked into any American
computer system.
At the same time the US was faced with a growing public
recognition that the Espionage Act charges against Assange were an attempt to
criminalise press freedom, in violation of international law and the First
Amendment of the US Constitution.
American prosecutors responded by incorporating false
testimony they had already secured from Thordarson and Hector “Sabu” Monsegur,
a criminal hacker turned FBI supergrass. The information they furnished was
aimed at bolstering the narrative that Assange was a common-variety hacker and
criminal, not a journalist and publisher.
In an interview with Stundin, Thordarson has walked-back
virtually all of the claims he made for the indictment. According to Stundin,
his statements are corroborated by previously unpublished documents and chat
logs. The June indictment refers to Thordarson as “teenager” and Iceland as
“NATO Country 1.” It asserted as fact that:
In 2010, Assange “asked Teenager to commit computer
intrusion and steal additional information, including audio recordings of phone
conversations between officials in NATO Country-1, including members of
parliament.” As per Stundin, “Thordarson now admits... that Assange never asked
him to hack or access phone recordings of MPs.” Instead Thordarson is now
claiming that such recordings were provided to him by a third party, without
any involvement by Assange. Thordarson says he later offered to show the files
to the WikiLeak's founder, without knowing what they contained.
“[T]hat Mr. Assange and Teenager failed a joint attempt to
decrypt a file stolen from a NATO country 1 bank.” Thordarson now says this
refers to encrypted files which were widely circulated online in 2010, and were
believed to relate to the collapse of Icelandic Landsbanki in the financial
crisis two years earlier. The files were thought to have been uploaded by a
whistleblower, and there is no indication that Assange had any involvement in
the leak or dissemination of the material.
That 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.” Thordarson now says he had access to the site as a volunteer in a
search and rescue team, and that Assange never requested to look at it.
That in 2011 Assange oversaw and approved of communications
between Thordarson and Monsegur, the head of the Lulzsec hacking group,
including over planned cyber attacks targeting Iceland. By that stage, Monsegur
had been caught by the FBI and had become an informant. Studin states that
based on documents provided by Thordarson, “There is no indication WikiLeaks
staff had any knowledge of Thordarson’s contacts with aforementioned hacking
groups, indeed the logs show his clear deception.”
More broadly, the Studin article sheds further light on
Thordarson’s relationship with WikiLeaks, which has consistently been
exaggerated by the American authorities and the press. It notes that he was
never a member of the organisation, but insinuated himself into a peripheral
role in 2010 by volunteering for it. Almost immediately, Thordarson began
moonlighting with journalists and hackers by falsely presenting himself as a
prominent WikiLeaks representative.
This fraudulent behaviour escalated in the summer of 2011,
when Thordarson initiated contact with Monsegur. According to Studin, “all
indications are that Thordarson was acting alone without any authorization, let
alone urging, from anyone inside WikiLeaks.”
By August 2011, the game was up, and Thordarson was being
pursued by WikiLeaks members, along with $50,000 in merchandise sales he had
diverted into his bank account by impersonating Assange. It was then that
Thordarson, apparently, emailed the FBI and offered to provide them with information.
It has long been public knowledge that in August 2011, a
planeload of US state operatives arrived in Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital. They
claimed to be there to investigate threats to Iceland’s cyber-security, which
the US State Department had first warned of the year before. When Iceland’s
Interior Minister Ögmundur Jónasson found out that this was a false pretext, he
surmised that the operatives were there to entrap Assange and sent them
packing. Studin has now confirmed that the agents had flown in to pick up
Thordarson, less than 48 hours after he offered to cooperate with the FBI.
Notwithstanding the initial setback, the relationship
between the Icelandic criminal and the American spies was rapidly consummated.
They took possession of files that Thordarson had illegally stolen from
WikiLeaks, and repeatedly flew him out of Iceland, all expenses paid.
Thordarson’s fortunes changed in 2013 and 2014. In a series
of court cases, he was convicted of embezzling from WikiLeaks and others,
impersonating Assange and molesting multiple underage boys. A psychiatric
assessment presented to the court found that Thordarson was a sociopath.
Having seemingly been dropped by the US authorities,
Thordarson was picked up again by the American government after they
orchestrated Assange’s expulsion from London’s Ecuadorian embassy in April
2019, and unveiled criminal charges against him. In May 2019, Thordarson was
granted an immunity deal by the Trump administration, signed by Kellen S.
Dwyer, the deputy of Attorney General William Barr.
In exchange for providing his lies against Assange,
Thordarson was given immunity from any American prosecution. The US authorities
also agreed to hide from Iceland and other countries any wrongdoing committed
by the conman, even if it involved hacking and threats to their national
security. According to Stundin, Thordarson has made the most of the deal,
beginning a major crime spree involving theft on a large scale, forgery and
financial deception.
The involvement of Thordarson exposes the attempted US
prosecution of Assange as an illegitimate dirty tricks operation, carried out
in violation of national laws spanning multiple countries, and international
legislation. For the past decade, the American governments of presidents Barack
Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden have collaborated at the highest level with a
peodophile and conman to subvert Iceland’s national sovereignty, frame a
journalist and lie to British courts.
US allies are also implicated in this operation. The British
Conservative government and Labour opposition have facilitated Assange’s
extradition hearings based on these sordid foundations. In her January ruling,
British District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser upheld all of the substantive US
allegations against Assange, including Thordarson’s lies, only ruling against
extradition on the grounds that the WikiLeaks founder’s health has been
destroyed and he would die in a US prison.
The Australian government and Labor opposition have refused
to defend Assange, despite him being an Australian citizen, and declared their
great confidence in the British “legal process.” The latest revelations brand
them as the accomplices of the US intelligence agencies and their criminal
stool pigeons in violating the rights of an Australian journalist.
The Thordarson revelations show that workers, students and
young people everywhere must take up the demand that the Biden administration
immediately drop all charges against Assange; that the UK authorities end the
extradition proceedings and immediately grant Assange’s unconditional freedom,
and that the Australian government uphold the rights of a citizen.
The filthy and criminal character of the US pursuit of
Assange, moreover, shows that the American government is seeking to establish a
precedent that could be used to destroy any publisher, political activist or
worker who takes a stand against it. Under conditions of a major escalation of
the class struggle, and growing social and political opposition, this precedent
must not be allowed to stand.
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