Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, Icelandic citizen and former Wikileaks volunteer turned 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 occasions of Thordarson now denying his own testimony, claiming that Assange never instructed him to carry out any hacking.
Key accusations in the case against Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, who faces up to 175 years in prison if extradited to the US, are reportedly based on testimony from convicted fraudster who admitted to media he was lying.
The newspaper points out that even though a court in London has denied extradition of Assange to the US on humanitarian grounds, it still sided with the US 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” – 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 at the time many people online were attempting to decrypt it. 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.
Assange’s fiancée, Stella Moris urges Biden to free WikiLeaks founder to show U.S. if he wants the United States to become a beacon for a free press once again and put the legacy of Donald Trump behind it, the fiancée of the WikiLeaks founder told Reuters.
Stella Moris, the partner of Julian Assange, has said that she and the WikiLeaks co-founder will tie the knot while he is in Belmarsh prison, and expressed hope he will be released soon so that there can be a proper celebration.
Moris, a lawyer who began her relationship with Assange during the years he spent claiming political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, told German news agency DPA that the couple has been engaged since 2016 and will press ahead with their wedding plans, even if it means getting married in the maximum-security London prison. Moris and Assange have two sons, aged four and two and a half.
