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 Thordar­son’s 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 Assange’s 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 Assange’s 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 Magistrate’s judgement, based on Thordar­son’s 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”.

Sigurdur Ingi Thordar­son

Mynd: Sig­tryggur Ari

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 Thordar­son’s 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 Iceland’s freedom of press laws for the 21st century. 

On the FBI radar

Thordar­son's 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.

Hector Xavier MonsegurA hacker and a mem­ber of the rather infamous LulzSec hacker group.

Mynd: afp

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.

Ögmundur JónassonFormer Iceland Minister of the Interior.

Mynd: Davíð Þór

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 Thordar­son's 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 Assange's 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.

Sigurdur Ingi Thordar­son and Julian Assange

Pres­ident Donald Trump's 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 Thordar­son’s 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.

Assange's 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. 

Sigurdur Ingi Thordar­son

Mynd: Pressphotos/Geirix

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.