Sigurdur Thordarson, a key witness for the FBI against Julian Assange, has been jailed in Iceland. The notorious alleged hacker and convicted pedophile was remanded to custody in Iceland’s highest security prison, Litla Hraun, on September 24. Þórðarson´s lawyer, Húnbogi J. Andersen, confirms that he is in custody. Thordarson was given immunity by the FBI in exchange for testimony against Julian Assange.
Thordarson was arrested the same day he arrived back in Iceland from a trip to Spain, and was subsequently brought before a judge after police requested indefinite detention intended to halt an ongoing crime spree. The judge apparently agreed that Thordarson’s repeated, blatant and ongoing offences against the law put him at high risk for continued re-offending.
On a crime spree accourding to the Icelandic police
The judgment utilizes a rarely invoked law intended to stop repeat offenders from running amok and continuing to violate the law before the system has a chance to catch up. It requires very specific criteria to be met and the legal bar is set high. One can only be remanded to custody under the law if there is a clear and present reason to assume the offender will continue on a path of crime as long as he is a free man and thus pose a danger to the public.
Whether Thordarson’s recent admissions to Stundin about his continued crime spree played any part in this decision is unknown at this time.
Indeed, he plainly admitted to continuing his crimes in a recent interview with Stundin. In the same interview he said: “The idea behind all the companies [that I run in Iceland] is to squeeze out every last penny, knowing it will inevitably lead to bankruptcy by request of the tax authorities and the bill would end with them. Is it illegal? No, it’s just very immoral, that much I would agree with. But I have not heard of anyone being convicted for this sort of thing,” he claimed. Yet people have been convicted of very similar things in Iceland.
Key witness for the FBI
Thordarson is a key witness for the United States Justice Department according to documents presented to a UK court in an effort to secure the extradition of Julian Assange. He 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 a recent interview with Stundin he admitted to fabricating statements to implicate Assange and contradicted what he was quoted as saying in US court documents. 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 case against Assange should be dropped"
Thordarson is a repeat offender who was described as a "sociopath" by court ordered psychologists during a trial which saw him jailed for sex crimes against nine under-age boys who he deceived and coerced into giving him sexual favours. Five other similar cases were dropped due to lack of evidence. One of the victims committed suicide after prosecutors dropped charges specifically related to his abuse.
The following is an excerpt from a recent Stundin interview with Þórðarson on the matter:
Reporter: “We are talking about a boy who felt like you had abused him.”
Siggi: “Yes.”
Reporter: “His case was dropped.”
Siggi: “Yes.”
Reporter: “He was denied justice.”
Siggi: “Indeed.”
Reporter: “He then commits suicide. I’m not saying you are solely responsible for that but you do bear some responsibility.”
Siggi: “I know that. Believe me, I know. 100%. I even tried to talk to the state prosecutor and asked, for sake of argument, if this case could be addressed to bring it to a close. They said no.”
Reporter: “Do you think you should have been convicted on the five charges that were dropped?”
Siggi: “Well, some of those cases that were dropped were just ridiculous. One of them was about a message I sent to someone on MSN asking if he wanted to have sex. But the boy who killed himself, his case should have gone forward.”
According to Stundin’s sources the main reason behind Thordarson’s recent arrest was the large and growing number of cases of financial fraud levied against him recently, including falsifying his own lawyer’s signature in order to fraudulently inflate the net worth of his company's assets.
Stundin asked Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor in chief at Wikileaks, for a comment on Thordarson’s arrest since the Thordarson is a key wittness in the case against Julian Against, former editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, and received the following statement:
“Last week we learned of the CIA plan to kidnap or kill Assange in the centre of London and now the key witness of the US prosecution against him is in prison for serial offences - the same person that a few weeks ago confirmed in interviews that the elements in the indictment against Julian where he was the only witness, were total fabrications. The case against Assange should be dropped and under no circumstances, given recent revelations, can the UK extradite him.”
Athugasemdir