WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – Key accusations in the case against WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, who faces up to 175 years in prison if extradited to the U.S., are reportedly based on testimony from a convicted fraudster who admitted to media he was lying.
Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, an Icelandic citizen and former WikiLeaks volunteer who became an FBI informant for $5,000, has admitted to Icelandic newspaper Stundin that he fabricated important parts of the accusations in the indictment.
In an article published on Saturday, Stundin details several parts of his testimony that he now denies, claiming that Assange never instructed him to carry out any hacking.
The newspaper points out that even though a court in London has refused to extradite Assange to the U.S. on humanitarian grounds, it still sided with the U.S. when it came to claims based on Thordarson’s now-denied testimony.
For instance, the ruling says that “Mr. Assange and Teenager failed a joint attempt to decrypt a file stolen from a ‘NATO country 1’ bank”, where “NATO country 1” is believed to refer to Iceland, while “Teenager” referred to Thordarson himself.
However, he now reportedly claims that the file in question can’t exactly be considered “stolen” since it was assumed to have been distributed and leaked by whistleblowers inside the bank and many people online were attempting to decrypt it at the time. That’s because it allegedly contained information about defaulted loans provided by Icelandic Landsbanki, the fall of which in 2008 led to a major economic crisis in the country.
Thordarson also provided the publication with chat logs from his time volunteering for WikiLeaks in 2010 and 2011, showing his frequent requests for hackers to either attack or get information from Icelandic entities and websites.
But, according to Stundin, none of the logs show that Thordarson was asked to do that by anyone inside WikiLeaks. What they do show, according to the newspaper, are constant attempts by the organization’s volunteer to inflate his position, describing himself as chief of staff or head of communications.
In 2012, WikiLeaks filed criminal charges against Thordarson over embezzlement and financial fraud. He was later sentenced for both in Iceland.
Stundin also cites Ogmundur Jonasson, then-Icelandic interior minister, who says U.S. authorities were going out of their way to get Assange.
“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,” Jonasson added.
Assange, who spent more than two years in prison in Britain, is wanted in the U.S. for espionage charges. He is accused of leaking classified information in 2010, when WikiLeaks published documents detailing abuses, including possible war crimes, carried out by the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq.
After publishing hundreds of thousands of U.S. military and diplomatic documents, Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and stayed there for seven years until he was arrested by UK police on the embassy’s premises in April 2019 and forcefully dragged out of the building.