On Wikipedia, this would probably be called a “stub.” So be it. Here are the main sources I am drawing from, if you’d rather look at them directly instead of reading this diary:
stundin.is/…
fair.org/…
www.democracynow.org/...
Common Dreams has a republication of the piece at Fair.org, with some more graphics:
www.commondreams.org/...
On DK there was only one mention of this news, and it was under a news wrap-up, so it didn’t get much attention: www.dailykos.com/…
(You will need to scroll down about ¾ of the way to find the relevant tweet.)
The major upshot: an Icelandic witness, who had done some work for Wikileaks, had agreed to testify against Assange on behalf of the U.S. Dept of Justice, but now says his testimony was a lie.
“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 [Icelandic News Outlet] 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.”
[snip]
“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.”
[snip]
“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.” [all emphases added]
From: stundin.is/…
I suspect that most folks on DK are familiar enough with corrupt police tactics against POC, such as relying on “jailhouse snitches” for testimony that has been enough to get people serious jail time, or even the death penalty. Everything seems to indicate that this is essentially what happened here; the difference is that rather than being a POC, the target was someone who had helped to embarrass the U.S. Government by exposing war crimes.
The Common Dreams article notes that former Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, Amnesty International, and the press freedom organization PEN have all called for the charges against Assange to be dropped since the publication of the article in Studin.
When Trump as president tried to seize phone records and emails from journalists, as was revealed in June, the reaction from the press and anyone who supports freedom of the press was of horror, as John Nichols writes:
“This month [June 2021] has produced jarring revelations regarding secretive efforts by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice to seize phone records— and in some cases emails—from journalists at CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The response from President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland to the revelations has been encouraging. But the work of putting the Department of Justice fully and firmly on the side of press freedom is far from finished.
The good news is that Biden has said the seizure of the phone records of reporters is “simply, simply wrong.” And White House press secretary Jen Psaki says that “the issuing of subpoenas for the records of reporters in leak investigations is not consistent with the President’s policy direction to the Department.” [added emphases]
madison.com/...
As Madison points out, the Biden administration has signaled that it is on the side of press freedom, but he notes that press organizations, like the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, want additional policy reforms to shore up these freedoms.
To signal its seriousness about freedom of the press, the Dept of Justice should drop the case against Assange. Mark Weisbrot has this take on it in his July 6, 2021 LA Times Op-Ed: “Trump Started a War On Journalism. Biden Has Yet to End It.”
www.latimes.com/...
The U.S. Government has tried to paint Assange as a hacker, rather than a publisher of leaked documents, but its main witness has now admitted he lied. Progressives, and anyone who wants a justice system that can’t be hijacked to put away those who reveal information embarrassing to the powerful, should carefully reconsider the narrative the government has tried to sell us about this case.
When we have truly free elections, progressives win. When we have a truly free press, progressives win. Prosecuting Assange was already a loss. Prosecuting him on the word of an admitted liar would be a catastrophe.