When he met Julian Assange for the first time, Sigurdur Thordarson admired the WikiLeaks founder’s attitude and quickly signed up to the cause. But little more than a year later, Thordarson was working as an informant spying on WikiLeaks for the U.S. government—embroiling himself as a teenager in one of the most complicated international events in recent history.

In a series of interviews with Slate, Thordarson has detailed the full story behind how, in an extraordinary sequence of events, he went from accompanying Assange to court hearings in London to secretly passing troves of data on WikiLeaks staff and affiliated activists to the FBI. The 20-year-old Icelandic citizen’s account is partly corroborated by authorities in Iceland, who have confirmed that he was at the center of a diplomatic row in 2011 when a handful of FBI agents flew in to the country to meet with him—but were subsequently asked to leave after a government minister suspected they were trying to “frame” Assange.

Thordarson, who first outed himself as an informant in a Wired story in June, provided me with access to a pseudonymous email account that he says was created for him by the FBI. He also produced documents and travel records for trips to Denmark and the United States that he says were organized and paid for by the bureau.

The FBI declined to comment on Thordarson’s role as an informant or the content of the emails its agents are alleged to have sent him. In a statement, it said that it was “not able to discuss investigative tools and techniques, nor comment on ongoing investigations.” But emails sent by alleged FBI agents to Thordarson, which left a digital trail leading back to computers located within the United States, appear to shine a light on the extent of the bureau’s efforts to aggressively investigate WikiLeaks following the whistle-blower website’s publication of classified U.S. military and State Department files in 2010.

Late last month, Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning was convicted on counts of espionage, theft, and computer fraud for passing the group the secrets. During the Manning trial, military prosecutors portrayed Assange as an “information anarchist,” and now it seems increasingly possible that the U.S. government may next go after the 42-year-old Australian for his role in obtaining and publishing the documents. For the past 14 months, Assange has been living in Ecuador’s London Embassy after being granted political asylum by the country over fears that, if he is sent to Sweden to face sexual offense allegations, he will be detained and subsequently extradited to the United States.

Meanwhile, for more than two years, prosecutors have been quietly conducting a sweeping investigation into WikiLeaks that remains active today. The FBI’s files in the Manning case number more than 42,000 pages, according to statements made during the soldier’s pretrial hearings, and that stack of proverbial paper likely continues to grow. Thordarson’s story offers a unique insight into the politically-charged probe: Information he has provided appears to show that there was internal tension within the FBI over a controversial attempt to infiltrate and gather intelligence on the whistle-blower group. Thordarson gave the FBI a large amount of data on WikiLeaks, including private chat message logs, photographs, and contact details of volunteers, activists, and journalists affiliated with the organization. Thordarson alleges that the bureau even asked him to covertly record conversations with Assange in a bid to tie him to a criminal hacking conspiracy. The feds pulled back only after becoming concerned that the Australian was close to discovering the spy effort.

—

It was 2010 when the saga began in Reykjavik, Iceland. Thordarson, then just 17, says that before his first encounter with Assange, he knew little about the man beyond a few YouTube videos he’d watched about WikiLeaks. But he went to hear Assange speak at a conference hosted by an Icelandic university, and the teenager was impressed. After the event, a journalist Thordarson knew introduced him to Assange, and the pair struck up a relationship that led to Thordarson doing some volunteer work for the organization. Before long, he was on the edges of WikiLeaks’ small, tight-knit inner circle.

At that time, the group was sitting on the explosive files it had received from Manning that included a video showing a U.S. helicopter attack that resulted in the deaths of 12 civilians, among them two employees of the Reuters news agency.

Thordarson, a blond-haired stocky figure with a baby face, was present while WikiLeaks staff and volunteers in Reykjavik were preparing the video for publication. When it was published by WikiLeaks in April 2010, under the name Collateral Murder, it catapulted the organization into the international spotlight and provoked an angry response from government officials in Washington.

The then-teenager, known as “Siggi” to his friends, was around at the height of that backlash. He was given administrative privileges to moderate an Internet chat room run by WikiLeaks. And when Assange relocated from Iceland to England, Thordarson came to visit. He even accompanied the WikiLeaks founder to court appearances in London as he fought extradition to Sweden over allegations of sexual assault.

Siggi and Assange in England in 2011. You can see that Assange is wearing his ankle monitor.

Photo courtesy of Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson

Thordarson looked up to Assange, viewing him as a friend. The WikiLeaks chief, he says, treated him well—helping him find a lawyer in 2010, not long after the pair had met, when he says he was wrongly accused by Icelandic police of breaking into a business premises. But signs that Thordarson had a proclivity for brushes with the law did not appear to trigger alarm bells early on at WikiLeaks—though perhaps they should have, because he was certainly not any ordinary volunteer. Unlike many drawn to WikiLeaks, Thordarson does not seem to have been principally motivated by a passion for the cause of transparency or by the desire to expose government wrongdoing. Instead, he was on the hunt for excitement and got a thrill out of being close to people publishing secret government documents.

As a child, Thordarson led a fairly normal middle-class life in Reykjavik, enjoying social studies and chemistry at school. His father worked as a sales manager at a painting firm, and his mother ran a hair salon. But as he entered his teenage years, he says, he began to feel that he could not connect with others in his peer group. He went to college to study computer science and psychology—but claims he was suspended after hacking into a college computer system.

By mid-2011, Thordarson’s thirst for adventure, combined with his interest in hacking, would irreversibly complicate his relationship with WikiLeaks. In June of that year, the Anonymous-linked hacker group LulzSec brought down the website of the CIA. Thordarson says that he and other WikiLeaks staff were amused by the incident, and he decided to reach out to the hackers to establish contact. Thordarson claims that, using the aliases “Q” and “Penguin X,” he set up a line of communication between WikiLeaks and LulzSec. During the series of exchanges that followed, Thordarson says he “suggested” that his group wanted assistance to find evidence of anti-WikiLeaks sentiment within the Icelandic government’s Ministry of Finance, which had thwarted an attempt by DataCell, a company that processes WikiLeaks donations, to purchase a large new data center in Reykjavik. (In early 2011, DataCell’s founder questioned whether the Icelandic government had deliberately prevented the deal because it was “afraid of letting WikiLeaks here into the country.”)

“That was basically the first assignment WikiLeaks gave to LulzSec,” Thordarson alleges, “to breach the Icelandic government infrastructure.”

Thordarson admits that he initiated the contact with the hackers, though he claims it was approved by Assange. It is unclear, however, whether WikiLeaks staff were fully aware of his correspondence with LulzSec and the “assignment” that he says he handed to them. WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson told me he believed that if Thordarson had any contact with LulzSec, it was as a rogue operative and that it was “highly unlikely” any other WikiLeaks staff, including Assange, knew what he was engaged in. Thordarson is a dishonest character, Hrafnsson said, who is trying to inflate the role he played as a volunteer.

Either way, in this case, the exchange Thordarson describes does appear to have taken place. It has since been independently corroborated in part by authorities in Iceland and was first reported—from the perspective of the hackers—in a 2012 book by Parmy Olsen, We Are Anonymous. I have also seen chat logs and emails from 2011 that appear to back up Thordarson’s assertion that he was communicating with the hackers, which has significant ramifications. By claiming that he effectively solicited LulzSec to break into government computers, Thordarson has implicated himself in a potential international criminal conspiracy, leaving WikiLeaks open to the allegation that it, too, was somehow involved.

But the full facts about the incident remain murky—not least because there is another dramatic twist to the tale.

What Thordarson did not know at the time was that Sabu, the loudmouth figurehead of LulzSec and one of the hackers he was communicating with, was in fact working as an FBI informant—and the online chat about hacking Icelandic government infrastructure was apparently being monitored by the feds. About four days later, the FBI contacted Icelandic authorities to warn them about an “imminent” hacking attack, according to Iceland’s state prosecutor, and this prompted Icelandic police to travel to the United States to discuss the matter. (Sabu, it later turned out, was a then-28-year-old hacker from New York named Hector Monsegur. The FBI reportedly tracked him to his Lower East Side apartment in early June 2011 and managed to “flip” him, because he was the guardian of two young children and desperate to stay out of jail.)

Thordarson says LulzSec never gave WikiLeaks any information about Icelandic government corruption, but hackers close to the group did hand over a confidential Icelandic state police document related to the security of the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik. He also claims that hackers affiliated with LulzSec and Anonymous turned over documents from a bank in Mexico, files from BP, and emails hacked from the Syrian government and the security think tank Stratfor, among others. Between February 2012 and July 2012, a large cache of Syrian government and Stratfor emails were published by WikiLeaks under the names the “Syria Files” and the “Global Intelligence Files.” (As a matter of policy, WikiLeaks does not comment on how its releases are sourced.)

Being at the center of the action had given Thordarson the adrenaline rush he was looking for. But the contact with LulzSec, which he had initiated, made him feel like he had gone too far. He was worried that in maintaining contact with the hackers, he was “breaking quite a lot of laws.” Meanwhile, news reports were saying that the U.S. government was already investigating WikiLeaks for its publication of classified documents, including the Collateral Murder video, diplomatic cables, and military war logs from Afghanistan and Iraq. And just as Thordarson was getting anxious about the high-stakes international affairs he had become entangled with, he also seems to have become bored with WikiLeaks—and he now admits he wanted to embark on a new adventure.

It was then that, at about 3:30 a.m. on Aug. 23, 2011, Thordarson sat down at his computer at home in Kópavogur and typed out a message to the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik. He decided he wanted to become an informant—and, unlike Sabu, he was ready to do so without any threats hanging over his head.

From: [redacted]@live.com
To: reykjavikdatt@state.gov
Subject: Regarding an Ongoing Criminal investigation in the United States.
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2011 03:33:39 +0000

After a quick search on the internet i have yet not been able to find a reliable contact form to establish a meeting with a person regarding an on going criminal investigation.

The nature of the investigation is not something that i desire to speak over an email conversation.

The nature of the intel that can be brought to light in that investigation will not be spoken over email conversation.

I here by request a meeting at the U.S Embassy in Iceland, or any other place.

I am an Icelandic citizen.

I can be contacted via this email address

Or Via Phone

00xxx-xxxxxxx

I request also that this email will be considered confidential.

Later that day, Thordarson received a phone call. On the other end, he says, was the security chief at the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik. The man asked what exactly the email was concerning, and Thordarson told him it was about the U.S. government’s ongoing investigation into WikiLeaks. He says the security chief denied the existence of any such investigation, but nevertheless asked Thordarson to come to the embassy to meet him. Thordarson agreed. And that afternoon, he turned up at the door of the Reykjavik embassy, explaining briefly that he wanted to share information about WikiLeaks. To prove he wasn’t bluffing, he showed staff a photocopy of Julian Assange’s passport that he had obtained.

He says he was told not to expect any further contact for at least a week, if at all. But less than 24 hours later, Thordarson’s phone rang again. He was asked if he could come back to the embassy for another meeting. This time, it was serious. Unlike the more casual first meeting, he was told to hand over any electronic devices and take off his watch. He was then escorted by the embassy security chief on a walk around Reykjavik, circling the city center a number of times to ensure they were not being followed. Then he was ushered into a conference room in the four-star Hotel Reykjavik Centrum, where, he says, two men were waiting for him. They spoke with American accents and displayed FBI credentials. Iceland’s state prosecutor has acknowledged that this meeting took place, confirming in a document published earlier this year that a handful of FBI agents and federal prosecutors were authorized to jet into the country after an Icelandic citizen contacted the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik. The U.S. Embassy did not respond to a request for comment.

For a brief moment, Thordarson became nervous. “The only thing that went through my mind was: ‘What the fuck am I doing?’ ” he recalls. But the feeling of doubt didn’t last long, and soon he was embracing the whole experience—almost as if he believed he was starring in his own personal spy thriller.

The FBI, he says, asked him a range of questions to “verify that I wasn’t full of bullshit.” At one point, he was asked what he knew about LulzSec, and he described the online conversations he had been having with Sabu. Thordarson did not know it at the time, but the FBI had presumably been monitoring those chats—as an informant, Sabu had been issued a government laptop, and his online activity was reportedly under surveillance 24/7. Indeed, the bureau had met with Icelandic authorities two months earlier to warn about a potential hacking attack on Icelandic infrastructure—just days after Thordarson says he gave LulzSec the “assignment” to hack Icelandic government computers.

Thordarson’s detailed knowledge of the Sabu chats—and his participation in them—apparently convinced the agents. For about the next four consecutive days, they met with him, Thordarson says, each time at a different hotel in Reykjavik. They asked about people connected to WikiLeaks and quizzed him about what Assange was doing at Ellingham Hall, the remote residence in England’s countryside where the WikiLeaks founder was living at the time while on bail and fighting extradition to Sweden. Thordarson says the agents also wanted information about WikiLeaks’ technical and physical security and the locations of WikiLeaks’ servers; they asked him, too, for names of individuals linked to WikiLeaks who might be open to becoming informants if approached by the FBI.

However, by Aug. 30, 2011, several days after the FBI entered Iceland, the Icelandic government had become unsettled about the presence of U.S. authorities. Then–Interior Minister Ögmundur Jónasson told me that Icelandic authorities initially believed the FBI agents had come to the country to continue their investigation into the impending LulzSec hacking attack on Icelandic government computers. But once it became clear that the FBI agents were in fact engaged in a broader swoop to gather intelligence on WikiLeaks, according to Jónasson, the agents were asked to immediately remove themselves from the country.

“I think it was a question of trying to frame Julian Assange,” Jónasson says, recalling the debacle. “And they wanted Icelandic authorities to help them with that.”

WikiLeaks ally DataCell had just months earlier accused the Icelandic government of working against the whistle-blower group, but by booting the FBI out of the country, the Interior Ministry had radically undermined that theory. Its decision, in fact, was a stark illustration of how WikiLeaks has continued to maintain a strong support base in Iceland since 2009, when it exposed controversial loan payments made by Kaupthing, the bank at the heart of the Icelandic financial crisis. As a result, the FBI could not meet with Thordarson in Iceland again. Instead, he says, the FBI held further meetings with him in Denmark (three times) and brought him to the United States (once) to continue discussions about WikiLeaks. Through this period, Thordarson says the bureau paid him about $5,000 in total to cover his expenses and to make up for loss of earnings.

Thordarson maintained contact with WikiLeaks, but he was secretly sending information back to the FBI. Once, he says, he told the agents that he was planning a visit to see Assange at Ellingham Hall. Eager to take advantage of the trip, they asked him to wear a recording device and make copies of data stored on laptops used by WikiLeaks staff. He alleges that the FBI wanted him to get Assange to “say something incriminating about LulzSec.” But he declined to wear a recording device and told his handlers that covertly copying data from computers wouldn’t be feasible because “people literally sleep with their laptops at Ellingham.”

Assange and Siggi in Paddington, London, in 2011.

Photo courtesy of Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson

Thordarson felt that wearing a wire in an attempt to secretly implicate Assange in LulzSec’s illegal hacking activities was a step too far, but he was happy to engage in equally dubious intelligence-gathering activities. He maintained contact with LulzSec and passed transcripts of his conversations with the hacker Sabu back to the FBI, his emails show. What Thordarson did not know at the time was that the FBI already knew about the chats—because, of course, it had recruited Sabu as an informant, too.

In one notable online exchange in November 2011, Sabu told Thordarson that LulzSec had breached Syrian government computers. He showed off snippets of hacked emails to Thordarson, saying he wanted to pass a trove of data to WikiLeaks. Later in the same conversation, Thordarson quizzed Sabu about a plan to “recruit” him for WikiLeaks. Neither of the two men appear to have realized that they were both independently acting as informants for the FBI.

“We ended up [inside] a certain government’s central mail server and got some fucking massive leaks coming out,” Sabu says in the chat. “You gents sure you’re not wanting to do anymore leaks?”

“Did J say anything about recruiting you permanently?” Thordarson fires back a few minutes later, in reference to Assange.

“Well he emailed me once but we didn’t get to talk,” Sabu says. “Guess he’s been busy/careful or whatever. But let him know we have intercepted 92GB of mails from .gov.sy [the Syrian government] so this can be one of the biggest leaks in history.”

When Sabu was outed as an informant in an explosive Fox News story in March 2012, it made sense to Thordarson. He says he found it strange that the FBI never seemed interested in the information he told them he had about the hacker, who was a hugely prominent figure at the helm of a group that had claimed responsibility for attacking U.S. government websites and multinational corporations, including Sony and News International. What the FBI agents wanted from Thordarson, it seems clear, was information that they could not get from any other source—information about the inner workings of WikiLeaks.

Before his penultimate meeting with U.S. authorities, in early February 2012, Thordarson says he was instructed to build relationships with people close to WikiLeaks in order to gather information for the feds. He received an email from his alleged handler—who used the alias “Roger Bossard”—in an account set up for him under the fake name “Ibrahim Mohammad.” The message encouraged Thordarson to “chat with those people we discussed on the phone” in order to “get a head start before our meet.” A few weeks later, he was flown out to Washington, D.C., and says he was put up in a Marriott hotel in Arlington, Va., near the location of a grand jury that has been collecting evidence about WikiLeaks since at least early 2011 as part of a criminal investigation into the whistle-blower organization. At meetings in a conference room of the hotel, he was asked about a host of individuals who had at one time volunteered or worked for WikiLeaks in some capacity, including Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir; eminent computer security expert Jacob Appelbaum; and Guardian reporter James Ball, a former WikiLeaks staffer. “They wanted to know literally everything there was to know about these people,” Thordarson alleges.

He says he “mostly gave them information that was general knowledge.” But he admits that he turned over some email addresses, details about instant messenger accounts, and phone numbers. This information is useful to the authorities because they can use it to order surveillance of targeted suspects’ phone or email accounts. Since 2010, several individuals connected to WikiLeaks have had emails and other communications monitored as part of the FBI’s investigation.

By the end of the meeting in Washington, the U.S. government had already gleaned a large amount of information about WikiLeaks from Thordarson. Its biggest haul of intelligence, however, was yet to come.

On March 18, 2012, Thordarson says he met with the FBI for what would be the final time, in Aarhus, Denmark. Prior to the meeting, he exchanged emails with his alleged handler, agreeing that he would come equipped with hard drives packed with chat logs, photographs, and other data related to WikiLeaks. According to a Justice Department receipt Thordarson says he was provided by the FBI, he turned over eight hard drives in total containing of about 1 terabyte of data, which is the equivalent of about 1,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica. (The Ministry of Justice in Denmark refused to comment on whether it authorized FBI agents to enter the country to meet with Thordarson, saying that it could not discuss “specific cases.”)

The Department of Justice receipt Thordarson says he was given for the delivery of eight hard drives to U.S. authorities.

Courtesy of Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson

Once the agents obtained the hard drives and received the passwords to access them, Thordarson’s emails suggest, they stopped responding regularly to his messages and rebuffed his attempts to set up another meeting. (Apparently, Thordarson’s thirst for adventure hadn’t yet been quenched.) They continued to encourage him to send data on WikiLeaks to a P.O. box at a UPS Store in Arlington, a short drive from Justice Department and FBI headquarters, but they pulled back, apparently concerned that their cover could soon be blown.

The UPS Store in Arlington, Va., where Siggi was asked to send mail for the FBI.

Photo by Torie Bosch

“Understand J has your laptop,” an alleged agent wrote to Thordarson shortly after the final Denmark meeting, referencing Assange. “Is there anything on it about our relationship?”

There were also signs that internal conflict was developing within the FBI over the infiltration of WikiLeaks, a controversial tactic not least because WikiLeaks is a publisher and press freedom groups have condemned from the outset the government’s investigation into Assange and his colleagues. In early 2012, after a period of not responding to Thordarson’s emails, his alleged FBI handler wrote that there had been “bureaucratic issues beyond my control that prevented me from maintaining contact,” adding that “our relationship has been problematic for some others. This is not an ordinary case. But those were not my issues and I have been diligently trying to work out those issues so we can continue our relationship.”

Thordarson, too, was having problems. He had become embroiled in a serious dispute with WikiLeaks about money in late 2011, which created friction between him, Assange, and WikiLeaks, ultimately resulting in him being dismissed from his volunteer role and perhaps even fueling his desire to continue informing on the group. Thordarson was accused of embezzling about $50,000 from a merchandise store that he had helped set up to raise funds. He admits that he took some of the money but denies stealing it, saying he used the funds to cover expenses he was owed by WikiLeaks. The matter is currently being investigated by police in Iceland.

In February, Iceland’s state prosecutor published a detailed timeline about the FBI’s visit to the country in 2011. The information shed light on the circumstances surrounding how U.S. authorities were asked to leave because of their attempt to gather intelligence on WikiLeaks. The same month, Thordarson was called to appear at a closed-door meeting with Icelandic parliamentarians to discuss the extent of his dealings with the FBI, which led to him being named in the Icelandic press as the person who had prompted the FBI to fly to the country in August 2011.

It was at this point, Thordarson says, that he was forced to come clean to WikiLeaks. He says he told Assange about everything he had turned over to the FBI and forwarded to WikiLeaks all of his emails with the alleged FBI agents. Unsurprisingly, Assange “wasn’t happy,” he says. Hrafnsson, the WikiLeaks spokesman, told me he believed Thordarson was guilty of “pathological” behavior, adding that the FBI’s apparent recruitment of Thordarson had revealed the U.S. government’s “relentless persecution” of WikiLeaks.

Thordarson, however, does not seem fazed by the controversy he has created. He now spends much of his time working for companies that offer security and bodyguard training in Iceland and Denmark, though does not believe his relationship with the FBI has “formally ended.” He claims that his handlers at the bureau told him that he might yet be asked to testify in court about WikiLeaks. The Justice Department declined to comment about Thordarson but confirmed that its investigation into WikiLeaks is ongoing.

Eventually, the U.S. government may attempt to prosecute Assange, and there can be little doubt that he remains fixed firmly in the feds’ crosshairs. The WikiLeaks founder’s attorneys believe that a grand jury probe may already have produced an indictment against him that remains under seal—and so he remains sheltered in Ecuador’s London Embassy, fearing that if he sets foot outside the door he will subsequently be extradited to the United States and thrown in jail. But the prospect of this does not appear to be weighing heavily on Thordarson’s mind. Only once, when recounting the time he spent passing information on Assange to the FBI, does his voice tremble with a quiver of guilt.

“If you come into Julian’s inner circle,” Thordarson says, “he really takes care of his friends.”

This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog and the Future Tense home page. You can also follow us on Twitter.

Ryan Gallagher  Aug. 9 2013 5:37 AM

Ryan Gallagher is a journalist who reports from the intersection of surveillance, national security, and privacy for Slate’s Future Tense blog. He is also a Future Tense fellow at the New America Foundation.

Find this story at 9 August 2013

© 2014 The Slate Group LLC.

WikiLeaks informant Sigurdur Thordarson, left, and LulzSec informant Hector Xavier Monsegur.

The FBI has so many moles in the hacktivist community, it seems, that at times they’ve even ended up unwittingly doing their best to get each other arrested.

For much of 2011, Icelandic then-teenager and self-described hacker Sigurdur Thordarson worked as both a WikiLeaks volunteer and an FBI informant. As Thordarson first told Wired, he claims to have given the FBI eight hard drives full of information potentially useful to the U.S. government’s ongoing investigation into WikiLeaks, which has come back into the spotlight due to the secret-spilling group’s role in helping NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden seek asylum.

In an instant message conversation with Thordarson Thursday, I asked him what he might have given to the FBI that could be relevant to its investigation, and he responded immediately with a log of an instant message conversation between himself and the member of the LulzSec hacker group known as Sabu, which he says he gave to the FBI and which he claims shows “that information was passed on from LulzSec that later got published by WikiLeaks.” Thordarson told me he believes the log supports a “conspiracy” charge against Julian Assange or others in WikiLeaks.

The log is likely less useful to the FBI than Thordarson thinks: It’s no surprise that WikiLeaks has published hacked files, or even that it publishes files hacked specifically by LulzSec, such as the millions of emails stolen from the private intelligence firm Stratfor by activist Jeremy Hammond, who pleaded guilty to computer fraud and abuse last month.

More interesting, or at least more humorous, is the fact that the chat log represents a conversation between two FBI informants, both of whom seem to be trying to lure the other into providing evidence they can turn over to their law enforcement handlers–or even into a meeting that could lead to the other’s arrest. Sabu, also known as Hector Xavier Monsegur, had agreed to work as an FBI mole within LulzSec months before his conversation with Thordarson. Thordarson, for his part, tells me he thought he was helping to deliver a “notorious hacker” to the FBI, and didn’t know he was speaking to a fellow stool pigeon. Monsegur doesn’t show any signs of knowing either.

Thordarson, it should be noted, is not a reliable source, and WikiLeaks has claimed that “at no time did he have access to sourcing or publishing systems.” But while he may have tampered with the chat logs he provided me, they would be nearly impossible to wholly fabricate, and include English colloqualisms from Monsegur that would be tough for a native Icelander like Thordarson to invent.

At the beginning of this November 2011 conversation, in which Thordarson goes by the name “Dumbo12,” Monsegur offers WikiLeaks a a trove of hacked Syrian government emails, which sound like a portion of collection WikiLeaks would publish in 2012.
“
Sabu: how you doing my brother?

Dumbo12: all good on my and my friend

Dumbo12: on my end my friend *

Dumbo12: how’s life

Sabu: everythings good over here

Sabu: been busy

Sabu: we ended up a certain governments central mail server

Sabu: and got some fucking massive leaks coming out

Sabu: you gents sure you’re not wanting to do anymore leaks?

Dumbo12: Oh we will make more leaks

Dumbo12: we are gathering material now’a days and getting more funds to keep hosting our data servers

Dumbo12: anything else you can tell me about the comming out leaks?

Sabu: well between us. we ended up owning syrian government central mail server. my teams working on translating from arabic to english. but we are seeing crazy shit

Monsegur sends Thordarson some examples, and Thordarson responds with interest, and then asks Monsegur how WikiLeaks can help him. He responds asking for money:
“
Sabu: this is real shit

Dumb012: is this something WL could get there hands on and get real and good publicitiy?

Sabu : my brother. I’ll give you url of email attachments right now as a sample

Sabu : one minute

Dumbo12: another question i was asked to ask you, Are you being monitered? are you safe? do you need any assistance from us?

…

Sabu: nein but thanks for asking

…

Sabu: the only assistance I need is money so I can stop living in poverty and being the brokest hacker on earth

Sabu: hahaha

Then Thordarson mentions recruiting Monsegur to become a member of WikiLeaks, but insists on meeting him in person.
“
Dumbo12: Did J say anything about recruiting you permanately?

Sabu: well he emailed me once but we didnt get to talk

Sabu: guess hes been busy/careful or whatever

Sabu: but let him know we have intercepted 92GB of mails from .gov.sy so this can be one of the biggest leaks in history

Dumbo12: Just to point out one thing – If we are to recruit you – a meeting will have to take place we can’t be talking to a username forever

Sabu: I don’t care about that. but if you meet me you better make sure you guys are secure

Sabu: I refuse to go to jail for meeting anyone

Dumbo12: we will be secure im more worried about you

Sabu: especially me. they’re trying to get me really hard man

Sabu: I think they’re builing a real ugly case against me

Sabu: I believe in this cause and J inspired me to do what I’m doing

Sabu: but it feels like they’re trying to turn me to a martyr

Dumbo12: Believe me when i say, i personally and this organization will do everything we can to protect you from our end

Sabu: thanks brother.

Later Thordarson asks Monsegur to meet in Iceland, and Monsegur instead asks Thordarson to come to New York.
“
Dumbo12: Do you feel comfortable traveling to Iceland?

Dumbo12: or do you wan’t us to travel somwhere?

Sabu: unfortunately I’m a grown ass man with kids, so I don’t have the luxory of traveling the world

Sabu: but if you sneak yourself out to new york we’ll meet up at a bar on some random shit

Dumbo12: haha new york?

Sabu: haha yeah

Dumbo12: you don’t ask for little my friend

Sabu: take your time brother

Sabu: but its easy to hide in this city

Dumbo12: well worst case scenario i get stopped in NY customs – but i do not think that will happen

Sabu: I can be in NY tomorrow but i won’t go there unless your 100%

Sabu: I’m 100% but again my nigga I can’t risk going to jail now. I’ve been hiding for so long

Sabu: so be private about every fucking thing

Dumbo12: give me a date that suits you and i will try my outmost to be ther

Dumbo12: e

Dumbo12: if i get stopped in the US and they realize who i am then im going to jail so i ask you the same be not private but be very private about everything

Dumbo12: and you need to know that if i travel there i will be traveling with a close protection unit

Sabu: thats fine. im from the ghetto so I got people too 🙂

Four months later, Monsegur was revealed as an FBI informant. His meeting with Thordarson at a New York bar seems to have never taken place. Which is a shame: The two had more in common than they realized.

6/28/2013 @ 3:51PM |Andy Greenberg

Find this story at 28 June 2013

Copyright 2014 Forbes.com LLC™

A “cherubic” looking 18-year-old was part of an international investigation

Wired reports that an Icelandic 18-year-old named Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson, who volunteered for WikiLeaks, was also informing for the FBI on the secretive group:

Thordarson was long time volunteer for WikiLeaks with direct access to Assange and a key position as an organizer in the group. With his cold war-style embassy walk-in, he became something else: the first known FBI informant inside WikiLeaks. For the next three months, Thordarson served two masters, working for the secret-spilling website and simultaneously spilling its secrets to the U.S. government in exchange, he says, for a total of about $5,000. The FBI flew him internationally four times for debriefings, including one trip to Washington D.C., and on the last meeting obtained from Thordarson eight hard drives packed with chat logs, video and other data from WikiLeaks.

The relationship provides a rare window into the U.S. law enforcement investigation into WikiLeaks, the transparency group newly thrust back into international prominence with its assistance to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Thordarson’s double-life illustrates the lengths to which the government was willing to go in its pursuit of Julian Assange, approaching WikiLeaks with the tactics honed during the FBI’s work against organized crime and computer hacking — or, more darkly, the bureau’s Hoover-era infiltration of civil rights groups.

Thursday, Jun 27, 2013 04:50 PM +0200
Alex Halperin

Find this story at 27 June 2013

© 2014 Salon Media Group, Inc.

Thordarson appears to be on Twitter: @singi201 and @singi201/wikileaks

A sends in response to a Cryptome query about allegations against WikiLeaks member “q” cited in We Are Anonymous, by Parmy Olson:

A friend has just alerted me to your liar-q-wl.pdf doc, and haven’t had the time to look through what else has been posted. If you want more information on Q, the psychopathic right-hand man of Julian Assange, I can give you more information, including his name and some of his other alleged criminal activity.
Cryptome: Thanks for the offer. Parmy Olson notes that lower-case “q” is not the same as upper-case “Q.”

_________

I seem to recall q also going as Q in the WL chatrooms.

q is Sigurdur Thordarson, who was 18 years old in 2010 and probably 17 when he joined WL. When Daniel Domscheit-Berg was still in WL, he knew Thordarson was trouble and made sure to keep him as far away from Julian Assange as possible. I believe Birgitta Jonsdottir may have done likewise; I do know that they knew each other, that she was extremely wary of him and did not like him. When Domscheit-Berg and Jonsdottir left, that barrier was removed and he quickly became Assange’s flunkie. In a better run organisation, an unintelligent, unskilled, and shady person like Thordarson would have never gotten anywhere near Assange, but because WL is run more like a textbook dictatorship, with its leader deriving his authority from a cult of personality based on an exaggerated and sometimes falsified life story, inefficiency and unintended irony abounded while meritocracy floundered. I have no doubt the current state of affairs within WL differs much from what I saw and experienced.

Why was he considered trouble? In part, before joining WL, it was said he had an extensive and dishonourable criminal record. While I was with WL, it became clear that something was rotten in Iceland Denmark when a fellow volunteer notified me that Thordarson had bragged to him that he intended to fly to the USA on WL’s dime to sleep with a uni student who was desperate to work for WL but was clearly little more than an Assange fangirl, then email her once he’d returned home to say there was no place for her in the organisation.

Thordarson disappeared in late 2010 from WL, with no one knowing where he’d gone. He resurfaced almost a week later, saying he’d been stopped by a police officer in his country while on the road, that his name had popped up on the police database, and as a result his laptop was taken. He never clarified why he’d been stopped and why he was on the database, but vaguely worded it in a way to make it out to be WL-related persecution, which is hard to believe.

A contact of mine who professed to be investigating WL financial malfeasance as of 2011 looked into this incident and said there was no record of it; another Icelander clarified Thordarson could only have been stopped for driving while under the influence. I have no way to validate or invalidate either q’s story or this investigator’s alleged research. I have considered the possibility this so-called investigator was actually Thordarson or someone else in WL playing mind games with volunteers who had left WL to keep tabs on them. It is the sort of thing Assange and company would do. I lost contact with the investigator after s/he claimed that his contact within WL who was giving him information had stopped singing. The investigator was said to have been working alongside a French journalist to break this story. I was hoping to help break the story to the NYT.

I am one of about a dozen who left in late 2010 because of WL’s abysmal lack of organisation and order, Julian Assange’s manipulative and exploitative personality, and Thordarson’s – for lack of a better term – psychopathy. Some of the volunteers in 2010 included some of the best and brightest computer programmers you can find, and Assange left Thordarson to dole out mostly meaningless tasks which we would never hear anything more of. The primary consequence of the WL chatroom was to cull people who genuinely wanted to volunteer for WL but who were of no use to WL under its modus operandi, and dupe them into thinking they were volunteers when they were really pissing into the wind. Many of us left for these ethical reasons, as well as common sense. The last I heard, almost everyone I worked with left WL and now dick-slap one another in public over one issue or another. No one knows most of us worked for WL, which is for the best, especially for those of us who want to vacation in the USA at some point in our lives.

Though I cannot backup with hard evidence the claims that Thordarson stole $60,000 of WL money, I can believe it because the investigator, despite his/her reliability being uncertain, told a similar story, and the chat transcripts that exist of Thordarson talking of using WL money to travel internationally just to get laid. I can confirm that near the end of my time there, he tried to get one volunteer to do something illegal with the WL shop and its corresponding bank account. The volunteer realized what he was asking could land the person in prison, and Thordarson moved onto another volunteer to get them to do the same.

Around the time we quit, it was made known that Thordarson was being prosecuted for bugging computers in the Icelandic parliament. That case actually exists and from what I was informed by a trusted source this week, it is still pending. Thordarson is said to have quit WL because the organisation stopped supporting him.

He has the expected traits of the hacktivist equivalent to Baghdad Bob: he’s obese, he can’t pick up, he’s a post-pubescent male yet listens to Justin Bieber, and he eats at KFC a lot. I’d call him a useful idiot, but he wasn’t even useful. The most meaningful thing Thordarson ever did at WL, as far as I’m aware, was he once filmed Julian Assange walking down a street.

I could tell you a lot more, including the US intelligence agency Assange once worked for and the malevolent little tricks he plays on hardworking WL volunteers.

A WikiLeaks Whistleblower

12 June 2012

Find this story 12 June 2014

Mr. Kristinn Hrafnsson, Wikileaks spokesperson, said last week that representatives from the FBI came to Iceland in August 2011. The Icelandic Minister of the Interior confirmed this the same day and said that when he became aware of the FBI in Iceland he cancelled all cooperation with the FBI and told the representatives to leave.

Mr. Hrafnsson said that the FBI came to Iceland to investigate Wikileaks. In an announcement from the Icelandic police it was stated that the FBI agents were here because of an imminent attack on the Ministry Offices in Iceland. The FBI agents interrogated one person regarding Wikileaks and the computer attacks. That person was interrogated at the US embassy in Iceland and then taken to Washington where he was interrogated for four more days. It was also mentioned in the announcement from the police that the person who was interrogated came willingly forward to the embassy.

The FBI agents interrogated the man, who is twenty years old, for five days after the Ministry of the Interior declined to cooperate with the FBI.

The interrogations took place in hotels around Reykjavik but never at the US embassy.

On August 30th the FBI agents told the Chief of police in Iceland that the Ministry of the Interior had said that they did not want the boy interrogated any further in Iceland and that their stay here was unwanted. The agents then left the country.

They however took the boy with them to Washington where he was interrogated for four more days. It is said that the boy went willingly. After the interrogations the boy was flown back to Iceland.

Mr. Ossur Skarphedinsson, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, said to a local newspaper today that the FBI’s stay in Iceland was illegal. He said that the objective of the ministries had been to protect the boy, they thought that the boy did not realize the consequences of his actions. Mr. Skarphedinsson added:

“Therefore, we at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs thought that these conversations should be prevented, to protect this Icelandic citizen, because the conversations took place at very unusual places and without authorization. We did not receive any request regarding authorization to interrogate this man.”

An announcement from Mr. Ogmundur Jonasson, the Minister of the Interior, is expected soon.

Tuesday, 05 February 2013 16:10 font size Print Email

Find this story at 5 February 2014

Copyright News of Iceland.

On Monday, Democracy Now! spoke to human rights activist Zainab Alkhawaja upon her release from prison by the Bahraini government after nearly a year behind bars. At that time she faced a return to prison pending her appearance in court today on charges of damaging police property, defacing a picture of the king and insulting a police officer. But her sister, Maryam Alkhawaja tweeted today that Zainab’s case had been postponed until March 3. Alkhawaja’s father, longtime activist Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, remains behind bars, serving a life sentence.

The U.S.-backed monarchy is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which is responsible for all naval forces in the Gulf. Alkhawaja’s release came on the heels of rallies marking the third anniversary of the pro-democracy protests that began on February 14, 2011. Protests against the Sunni regime have been crushed by martial law and a U.S.-backed Saudi Arabian forces. Scores of people were arrested ahead of protests on Friday, when police fired bird shot and tear gas at demonstrators. Tens of thousands of people defied the crackdown to march on Saturday.

Watch all of Democracy Now!’s coverage of Bahrain.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: In Bahrain, human rights activist Zainab Alkhawaja has been released after nearly a year behind bars. Her release came on the heels of rallies marking the third anniversary of the pro-democracy protests that began on February 14th, 2011. Protests against the Sunni regime have been crushed by martial law and a U.S.-backed Saudi Arabian forces. Scores of people were arrested ahead of protests on Friday, when police fired bird shot and tear gas at demonstrators. Tens of thousands of people defied the crackdown to march on Saturday.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Bahrain, where we’re joined by Zainab Alkhawaja. She’s joining us by Democracy Now! video stream. Her father, longtime activist, Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, remains behind bars, serving a life sentence. Zainab has a large following on Twitter. Her account was silenced since her arrest until her release Sunday, still featuring a hashtag that calls for the release of her father.

Zainab, it’s great to have you back. First of all, how does it—

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: It’s great to be back.

AMY GOODMAN: How does it—how does it feel to be free?

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Wow! It feels like a dream. I keep expecting to wake up and see myself inside my cell.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about your time in prison. You’ve been in prison for almost a year.

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Mm-hmm. Well, what I feel about prison is that it’s a place where they try to break a person. It’s a place where you feel like you can be humiliated at any minute and on any given day. So, it can be a very stressful situation if you don’t look at the bigger picture and the cause that you’re sacrificing for.

My time in prison was a little bit difficult. The prison in Bahrain is a very, very dirty, filthy place. Seeing cockroaches and bed bugs and all kinds of insects is a daily thing. The number of prisoners inside the prison is way too many. We have people sleeping on the ground. There’s not enough beds. The rooms are very small. We cannot move in and out of our cells a lot. And also, we had a very difficult time convincing them to let us go out and get some air and get some sunlight. So, actually, for the first six months in prison, I was not let out of the prison. So sometimes it does feel like a grave.

But when I came out, the first thing I did say was, one year in prison is nothing. And I say that because it’s nothing compared to what we’re willing to sacrifice for our goals, for democracy in our country.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Zainab Alkhawaja, you’ve described the conditions in the prison. Now, the prison you were in only housed political prisoners, is that correct?

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Oh, no, there are a lot of prisoners. We’re a minority. And I’m separated, actually, from the other political prisoners. So, the prisoners that share a cell with me and share the same ward with me are actually not political prisoners.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Zainab, what do you expect will happen on Wednesday? There’s some concern that you might return to prison? And could you outline what precisely you’ve been charged with?

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Well, what happened since I was imprisoned is because they have very small cases against me. I keep getting new cases, two- to three-month sentence, two to three months. And I think this time I got out basically just on a technicality, on a glitch. And they’re just preparing the new cases against me. Tomorrow, I do have court, and my lawyer has told me that I might get arrested from court and taken back to prison. And that’s why, actually, I’ve left all my things in my cell in prison, and I’m expecting that I might have to go back tomorrow.

AMY GOODMAN: And what are your feelings about that?

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Well, my feelings are—I mean, even coming out, I have very mixed feelings, coming out from prison. I miss my daughter a lot. This year has been very difficult being away from her. I always dream about just the smallest things—reading her a bedtime story, taking her to kindergarten, giving her a hug. You know, it’s not the same when you have to meet her once a week with police sitting next to you, watching you, hearing every word you say. But at the same time, when I came out from prison, I realized that I left a lot of people back in prison. I left half my family back in prison—my brothers, my uncles, my father, all the revolutionaries who are sacrificing for all of us before they’re sacrificing for themselves. So, we’re willing to make these sacrifices, and I’m willing to go back. And I want the government in Bahrain to realize that their prisons don’t scare us. I’m going to go to court tomorrow, and if they arrest me, that’s fine. I’ll go back to my prison cell. And we’re going to continue on this path. We started on a path, and we’re determined to continue on it until we reach our goal.

AMY GOODMAN: What is your goal? What are you calling for?

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: We’re calling for a country where every Bahraini is respected, every Bahraini is treated equally. We’re calling for a country where we feel we have rights, where we feel we have dignity, where people can’t step all over us, can’t torture and kill and get away with these things. We’re living in a country, basically, where the criminals are the most powerful people in the country, and where a lot of us actually feel proud when we’re in jail, because we know that in Bahrain, when you go to jail, it means you did something right and not wrong. It should be the other way around. It should be that people who are activists, people who are calling for rights, they should be the ones who are on the outside and working, and criminals, people who are killing, people who are torturing, they’re the ones who should be in jail. But it’s all the other way around. But at the same time, I say that in Bahrain I do not feel pity for all those people who are in prison, all the injured protesters. I feel proud when I see them. I feel pity for our oppressors, because what they do is breaking them inside. We’re not broken. We sacrifice, but we feel proud, and we hold our heads up high.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Zainab, how do you respond to criticism of the anti-government movement that claims that it’s being funded exclusively by Iran in an attempt to make the region more Shia-sympathetic? Just today in The New York Times there’s an op-ed by someone called Sarah Bin Ashoor titled “Bahrain’s Hijacked Reform Efforts,” which makes exactly that claim. Do you see this struggle as a sectarian one?

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Definitely, definitely not. I mean, in Bahrain, Sunnis and Shias have lived side by side for generations. There’s intermarriage. We have—like, all friends are Sunnis and Shia, and we usually can’t even tell each other apart. The people who are trying to make it into a sectarian thing is the government. They’re the ones who are really trying, putting all their effort into making it a sectarian thing. Another thing is that Bahrainis are very proud Arabs. We have nothing to do with Iran. We started this revolution calling for our rights. I mean, we’ve lived under the same monarchy for more than 200 years. It’s actually—it’s really strange that nothing has happened before. This revolution is long overdue. People are supposed to stand up and call for their rights. It’s the 21st century. Everywhere we go, we see democracy, we see freedom, in other countries. We see civil liberties. And over here, we’re supposed to keep quiet just so that nobody accuses us of doing something just because we’re Shia. I think it makes a whole lot of sense what’s happening in Bahrain. We’re inspired by—we were inspired by what happened in Egypt, and we consider our Egyptian brothers our brothers. And they started this, and the Tunisians, and we’re doing the exact same thing. We’re calling for our rights. We’re calling for a country where we can live freely and with our dignity. This has nothing to do with Shia and Sunni. We want these rights for all Bahrainis, whether they are Shia or Sunni.

AMY GOODMAN: Zainab, I want to ask you about Bahrain practice of jailing some of the children who have been at protests. Last month, Bahrain’s juvenile court ordered the release of 10-year-old Jehad Nabeel AlSameea and 13-year-old Abdulla Yusuf AlBahrani, who were arrested for throwing stones at police during a demonstration outside the capital. Zainab, your sister, Maryam Alkhawaja, tweeted a photo of two more young boys, Hussain Jameel and Mohammed Alshofa, who were arrested Saturday in Salmabad.

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: The government in Bahrain is actually trying to punish everybody for this revolution that has happened, this uprising that has happened in Bahrain. They do not differentiate between children and grown-ups, men and women, activists and otherwise. To them, everyone just needs to be controlled and to be put in a state of fear. Throughout these three years, we’ve seen a lot of this. We’ve seen a lot of children being beaten, being tortured, being imprisoned. We’ve seen children in courts who did not even understand what their crime was, who did not even understand what the judge was saying. This is one of the things that actually really hurts us when we see that. We don’t want the children to suffer. We, as human rights activists, want there to be some kind of protection. But as you know, in countries like ours, in dictatorships, sometimes there’s no differentiation at all. I mean, if even doctors get punished for treating people, children get punished for going on the street. And, I mean, it’s only—a lot of these children who are going on the streets are children of detainees, are children of martyrs, people who were killed during clashes. And you can understand why they would be angry. But I could never understand why the government would target children in their—in trying to just achieve this crackdown on the people of Bahrain.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Zainab, what do you see is the role of Saudi Arabia in this conflict? And what do you think the U.S. should be doing?

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Well, one of our biggest problems here in Bahrain is Saudi Arabia, because sometimes it feels like we’re not just trying to rise up against the al-Khalifa regime here, but the small population of Bahrain is trying to rise up against the Gulf states with all their dictators. And this is what makes it very difficult. Even though the Bahraini people are united, even though they’re rising in very big numbers, but the Saudis are standing very strong behind the al-Khalifa regime, supporting them in all they do. And, actually, the Americans are doing the same thing. The American government is doing the same thing and supporting the Bahraini regime, despite all what’s happening, despite all the evidence that’s going out on a daily basis from Bahrain about the mistreatment, about the human rights conditions, about the, I think, now almost 3,000 political prisoners in Bahraini prisons. And still, the American administration are standing beside the Bahraini government and supporting them and considering them allies.

AMY GOODMAN: Zainab, talk about your father, Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, who is in prison. He has a life sentence now?

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Yes. My father is sentenced to life in prison. He has now been in prison for almost three years. My father is my rock. He’s one of the strongest persons I have ever known. I have never seen him weak. After three years in prison, he’s as strong as ever. And my father has always been my role model. He’s been a human rights activist for almost all his life. He has been trying to do something not only for our country, but for the region, as well. He had been, before the revolution, been going from country to country throughout the Arab world training people on human rights, on how to write reports about human rights abuses. My father tries to put seeds in the ground, so that some day those seeds would grow into something that would benefit our region and our world. And I really believe in his work. He has been working very hard for the past maybe—more than 20 years. It’s not something that he started doing today and yesterday.

And this is why he’s one of the people that the government has been targeting for a long time and has used this situation now to just give him a life sentence, put him behind bars, so they could silence him. My father is one of the most outspoken people in the country talking about what’s happening here, about conditions here. So, putting him behind bars, I think the only reason for that is to silence him, like they’ve done with other activists, like Nabeel Rajab, for example. They’re behind bars so that there’s no one to represent the people of Bahrain.

But I think what makes us proud is, even though almost all human rights activists are either out of the country or in jail, even though a lot of the civil society leaders are in prison, a lot of the activists are in prison, still the Bahraini people go out, and they protest, and they demand their rights, which is very difficult. When you’re standing there with activists, you know that there’s someone covering what you’re doing, someone there who might try to protect you. But even without this protection, on this past February 14, we saw very, very big numbers of people go into the streets, still making the same demands, showing that they’re not backing down.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what are the prospects, Zainab, for any kind of change in Bahrain? What is the state of negotiations between opposition groups and the government? And what prospects do these political prisoners—3,000, you said, including many of your family members—have of being released or having their jail sentences diminished?

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Well, here’s the thing. Prison can be difficult. Actually, it is very difficult. And a lot of people, they want to get out of prison. They want to go to their families. But this is not the end goal. We don’t just want to get out of the small prison into the bigger prison we call Bahrain. Bahrain is a big prison for us. A lot of Bahrainis don’t feel safe until they’re on a plane heading outside of their country, because here in this country you might be arrested on any day. You might get beaten up on any day. So, as a Bahraini, you do not feel safe. So, our end goal—a lot of prisoners say this. They say, “We don’t want to just get out of prison. After three years of suffering, of giving, of doing as much as we can, we want real results. We want democracy. We want to be represented. We want rights.”

And I think that’s why if the government tries to solve the situation just by releasing some political prisoners, that’s not going to be the real solution. The government must give up some of the power and control that they have. And, I mean, the people of Bahrain, they want ultimately to have a full democracy. They want a country where they can vote for a president. The al-Khalifa regime is a regime that has been forced on the people of Bahrain. The al-Khalifa regime is just—is a hereditary regime, and we have no choice in who’s ruling this country. And I think this is one of the biggest problems. This is not something that the people here accept.

AMY GOODMAN: Zainab, we’ve talked about Iran, about Saudi Arabia, about, you know, Bahrain itself. What about the United States, a major force? It has the Fifth Fleet there. What is the role of the United States with the Bahraini monarchy?

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: I mean, my sister Maryam has been going to the States, meeting with officials, trying to speak to them about the situation here, about what the people of Bahrain are going through. And I think the conclusion she reached is she’s lost a lot of hope in them. She says, “I haven’t lost hope in humanity, but I have lost hope in the foreign governments, who tend to speak a lot about human rights and about democracy, but when you come on the ground, you see them taking the side of the dictators, especially in Bahrain.” And they do that for self-interest. They have to make a choice. I’ve been saying that since the beginning of the revolution. You either stand with the people who want democracy, who want freedom, and you try to protect them, or at least you stop supporting the dictators and the oppressors who are torturing them, who are killing them, just so that they can remain in power.

America, unfortunately, in Bahrain has a very, very bad name. They have a very bad reputation. They stand by the regime. They sell them weapons. They stand aside and watch what’s happening to the people of Bahrain. And I think maybe a lot of people here did have hope in the beginning that the Americans would stand with freedom and justice and human rights and all those things that they talk about a lot, that the American presidents always talk about, but unfortunately now I think that no one has that hope anymore. They see that America only acts upon their—what they think is their interest in Bahrain.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: But what interests of the U.S. are served by supporting the al-Khalifa regime in Bahrain?

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Of course, as you said, the Fifth Fleet is a big part of this. And the relationship between the U.S. and the al-Saud regime, they want to be on their good side, I guess. So, a lot of things together just, they—I guess they don’t see how supporting human rights in Bahrain is going to do them any good. And that’s not how the government of America should be thinking. If they feel like they represent freedom and democracy, they should be thinking first about the people and about the freedom that they’re demanding, about the democracy that they’re demanding, not thinking first about how their interest in the region is served by supporting dictators.

AMY GOODMAN: Zainab, if you are not sent back to prison, will you stay in Bahrain or leave?

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: I will stay in Bahrain. I was born in exile. I lived in exile most of my life. The first time I saw my country, I was a 17-year-old. And I love my country so dearly. I prefer prison to exile. I prefer, you know, living with a daily risk of injury, of getting arrested, all those things, rather than leaving my country. I’m staying here alongside my people, and I’m going to fight with them for as long as it takes. And I’m going to risk—I’m going to take the risk just as they do. I don’t think that I can leave my country. It’s very difficult.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Zainab, very quickly, before we conclude, could you talk about the significance of the terrorism law in Bahrain, when it was introduced and how it’s been used to prosecute protesters and those involved in the demonstrations?

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Well, in a lot of countries in the region, not just Bahrain, the terrorism law and the terrorism, just the word itself, has been used so much to punish people who are justly calling for their rights. And a lot of times—and there’s obviously no proof. And as you know, the justice system here in Bahrain—I mean, there’s no real courts. They just keep using the courts and the justice system to just punish activists. So this word “terrorism” is being thrown all over the place, even though the revolution in Bahrain is one of the most peaceful revolutions. People go out on a daily basis with nothing in their hands. All they do is shout slogans. And yet, they are being sent to prison. One of those people is my father and the rest of the leaders who are with him in prison right now. They call for human rights. They teach people how to go out and demand those rights. And then suddenly they’re in prison for charges that have to do with terrorism or trying to overthrow the regime, which they consider as terrorism. In this day and age, everybody should know that trying to change a regime is a people’s right. It’s not considered terrorism. But I guess they’re using what’s happening in the world—fear, the fear that people have of terrorism—they’re using that word to—as an excuse to punish people who are calling for their just demands.

AMY GOODMAN: Zainab, how many members of your family are in prison?

ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Right now, my father and my uncle are in prison.
GUEST

Zainab Alkhawaja, a pro-democracy activist in Bahrain who was just released from jail after nearly a year behind bars. Her father, prominent human rights activist Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, remains imprisoned, serving a life sentence.

February 19, 2014

Find this story at 19 February 2014

Since 2010 there have been revelations about police infiltration of protest groups. For over 40 years the state sanctioned the use of undercover police to gain intelligence on political activists, including animal rights campaigners.

Though it was widely assumed that groups were under surveillance, no-one would have imagined the extent to which the secret state burrowed deep into organisations, established close friendships and sexual relationships with activists, and broke the law to further its objectives. This article will explain how it happened and what can be learnt from it.

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Het onderstaande artikel is verschenen in het tijdschrift AMOK van juni 1984. Ook toen al de NSA! AMOK wist te te melden dat deze dienst bij insi¬ders ook bekend stond als als ‘No Such Agency’ of ‘Never Say Anything’. De aanleiding voor het artikel was de ontmaskering van een infiltrant in het vredeskamp Woensdrecht, John Gardiner. Gardiner had verklaard dat hij een veldagent was van de National Security Agency, op pad gestuurd door de dienst om de komst van de kruisraketten naar Nederland te beveiligen. In plaats daarvan smokkelde hij granaten het kamp binnen die hij in België gestolen had. Hij werkte voor de BVD en de CIA, maar voor NSA-werkzaamheden bestaat geen enkel bewijs.
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Het met technische middelen op grote schaal afluisteren van potentiële vijanden en de eigen burgers door Amerikaanse inlichtingendiensten is geen nieuw verschijnsel. En het in opspraak raken van deze activiteiten is dat zeker niet. Er zijn rond de National Security Agency (NSA) – de dienst waar het vooral om gaat – verschillende malen golven van kritische publiciteit geweest. De manier waarop dat gebeurde was steeds afhankelijk van de politieke en maatschappelijke context, maar een constante wordt gevormd door een los netwerk van kritische onderzoekers, journalisten en activistische groeperingen. Het technisch karakter van de materie stimuleert tot specialisme, soms zie je na tientallen jaren dezelfde namen weer terugkomen. De Britse journalist Duncan Campbell is een voorbeeld hiervan.

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De wandelaar die vanuit het oosten de Friese plaats Burum nadert, ziet eerst tussen de bosjes aan de horizon een diagonaal object verschijnen. Het is het zijaanzicht van een enorme schotel. Dichterbij komend ziet hij een steeds groter aantal schotels van verschillend formaat en uitgebreide bijgebouwen. Het is ‘It Greate Ear’ (het grote oor), zoals het daar wordt genoemd. Een andere naam is ‘Station 21’. Het is de belangrijkste locatie van de Nederlandse variant van de National Security Agency (NSA): de NSO

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Het boek True Believer, over de jacht op een Amerikaanse die twintig jaar lang voor Cuba spioneerde, toont tevens het failliet van geheime diensten aan.

In de discussie rond het massaal afluisteren van internet en telecommunicatie door de Amerikaanse National Security Agency (NSA) lijkt het niet om de effectiviteit te gaan, maar om de grootschaligheid. Nu was die digitale verzamelwoede al tientallen jaren bekend, al waren er nog geen documenten beschikbaar die dit ook onderschreven. Data verzamelen en die ook zinvol toepassen, zijn echter twee verschillende dingen.

In de Amerikaanse senaat zijn grote twijfels gerezen over de effectiviteit van de digitale hooiberg die de NSA aanlegt. Of deze informatie aanslagen voorkomen heeft, is volstrekt onduidelijk. De Cubanen kunnen zich geen miljarden verslindende digitale stofzuiger veroorloven en leggen zich vooral toe op Humint, menselijke bronnen. (lees: infiltranten en informanten.) Hiermee lijkt het straatarme Caribische eiland de Amerikanen te slim af.

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Sympathie voor het werk van Buro Jansen & Janssen? Wordt dan nu donateur.
In 2014 staat op de agenda:
– elke twee maanden een observant ‘nieuwe stijl’
– verder uitbouwen van het nationaal veiligheidsarchief
– vernieuwing van openbaarheid.nl
– vele onbekende nieuwsberichten op niuwsblog.burojansen.nl
– het opstarten van Crowd Digging, de Nederlandse cables
– mogelijk een nieuwe website over veilig internetten
– mogelijk een nieuwe website politieklachten.nl
– een magazine over preventief fouilleren
– en wie weet nog meer

Wordt donateur of vraag familie, vrienden en bekenden donateur te worden. Bankrekening NL56 INGB 0000 6039 04 (ING 603904 BIC: INGBNL2A) ten name van Stichting Res Publica, Postbus 11556, 1001 GN Amsterdam. Res Publica is de stichting van Jansen & Janssen.
Buro Jansen & Janssen is aangemerkt als ANBI (Algemeen Nut Beogende Instellingen) instelling. Dit betekent voor mensen die ons willen steunen het volgende:
– Als een instelling door de Belastingdienst is aangewezen als een ANBI, kan een donateur giften van de inkomsten- of vennootschapsbelasting aftrekken (uiteraard binnen de daarvoor geldende regels).
Voor Buro Jansen & Janssen betekent dit:
– Een ANBI hoeft geen successierecht of schenkingsrecht te betalen over erfenissen en schenkingen die de ANBI ontvangt in het kader van het algemeen belang.
– Uitkeringen die een ANBI doet in het algemene belang zijn vrijgesteld voor het recht van schenking.

Vreemdelingendetentie is een wonderlijk iets. Het wordt gepresenteerd als een bestuurlijke maatregel, alsof het acceptabel is om mensen die niets misdaan hebben op te sluiten. Het klinkt bijna klinisch, maar helaas is een bestuursrechtelijke straf vaak erger dan een strafrechtelijke. Beroepsmogelijkheden, uitgebreide rechterlijke toetsing en andere rechten van verdachten zijn in de loop der jaren meer en meer uitgehold.

De profielschetsen 2008 en 2010 zijn in dat licht opmerkelijk te noemen. Opmerkelijk omdat het ministerie van Justitie, tegenwoordig Veiligheid en Justitie, de rapportages niet openbaar maakt en omdat de mensen in vreemdelingendetentie eigenlijk nette mensen zijn. Deze mensen worden echter zwaar gestraft, zowel fysiek door opsluiting, ongewenst verklaring en andere beperkingen, maar ook door de stigmatisering als zijnde criminele vreemdelingen.
artikel als pdf
het onderzoek
profielschets 2008
profielschets 2010

De overheid doet onderzoek naar de uitvoering van haar eigen beleid. Dit onderzoek is zowel voor de beeldvorming als voor de juridische praktijk van belang. Een hoogleraar en niet-gouvernementele organisaties (ngo’s) zijn op de hoogte van dit ‘interne onderzoek’. Waarom brengt dan niemand de resultaten naar buiten? En waarom ontkennen de hoogleraar en het ministerie het bestaan van intern onderzoek? En waarom wordt dit onderzoek niet overhandigd aan de Tweede Kamer?
artikel als pdf
het onderzoek
profielschets 2008
profielschets 2010

De profielschetsen heten respectievelijk ‘Profielschets van vreemdelingen in bewaring, een verkennend onderzoek uit september 2009’ en ‘Een profielschets van vreemdelingen in bewaring 2010 van 1 februari 2012, definitief onderzoek’. Het verkennende onderzoek heeft betrekking op 2008. ‘Iedereen die in dit jaar als vreemdeling bij de sector DBV (Directie Bijzondere Voorzieningen, -red.) aanwezig is geweest, is meegenomen in het onderzoek. Concreet betekent dit een optelling van diegenen die aanwezig waren per 1 januari 2008, plus diegenen die in 2008 als vreemdeling zijn ingestroomd. Indien een vreemdeling meerdere keren in 2008 is ingestroomd, is gekozen om alleen de laatste instroom in de vreemdelingenbewaring mee te nemen in de selectie.’
artikel als pdf
het onderzoek
profielschets 2008
profielschets 2010