Yesterday, the US Department of Justice published a summary (.pdf) of a federal grand jury’s second superseding indictment against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently in custody, on charges of “offenses that relate to Assange’s alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.”
In response, Wikileaks tweeted: “The ‘Star Witness’ of the new superseding indictment is a diagnosed sociopath/ convicted conman/ child abuser/ FBI informant who was found guilty in Iceland of impersonating #Assange”, with a link to the indictment summary.
The person Wikileaks is referring to is Sigurður Ingi Þórðarson, better known in the media as Siggi hakkari, or Siggi the Hacker. While the full text of the indictment does not mention Sigurður by name, it does state in part: “In early 2010, around the same time that ASSANGE was working with [Chelsea] Manning to obtain classified information, ASSANGE met a 17-year-old in NATO Country-1 (“Teenager”), who provided ASSANGE with data stolen from a bank.” Iceland is indeed a NATO country, and Sigurður was 17 at the time this alleged incident took place. Further details in the indictment make it clear that the “Teenager” in question can be no one other than Sigurður.
Wikileaks’ characterisation of Sigurður in their tweet is a matter of public record.
In 2014, Sigurður was charged embezzlement, fraud, and theft adding up to about 30 million ISK. He ended up being ordered to pay WikiLeaks 7 million ISK as well as being sentenced to prison for 2 years for embezzlement and financial fraud.
In 2015, he was sentenced to three years in prison for sexually assaulting nine boys between the ages of 15 and 20 on multiple occasions (note that the linked article also details his other financial crimes). A psychologist who examined him found that, while he was competent to stand trial, that he was psychopathic.
All of this, incidentally, happened after Sigurður began working as an informant against Wikileaks for the FBI, in 2011.
Assange is currently in custody in the UK, awaiting extradition to the United States. In a recent interview with the Grapevine, Wikileaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson vowed that they would fight the extradition, stating in part that Assange’s arrest violates both international law and “moral decency”.
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