Wikileaks grundare Julian Assange eftersökt för våldtäkt i Sverige

As I reported last year in a piece for Slate, Sabu, while working as an FBI informant in 2011, was in contact with a young WikiLeaks volunteer who had established a close relationship with Assange.

The volunteer, Sigurdur Thordarson, told me that with Assange's approval he set up a line of communication between Sabu, LulzSec, and WikiLeaks. He said he then solicited the hackers to infiltrate computers at the Icelandic Ministry of Finance to find evidence of anti-WikiLeaks sentiment. "That was the first assignment WikiLeaks gave to LulzSec," Thordarson claimed, because the Ministry of Finance had months earlier thwarted an attempt by DataCell, a company that processes WikiLeaks donations, to purchase a large new data center in Reykyavik. The FBI appears to have monitored the exchange between WikiLeaks and LulzSec through Sabu, and a few days later contacted Icelandic authorities to warn them about an imminent cyber attack. Icelandic police travelled to the United States to discuss the matter, according to information published by the country's state prosecutor.

According to Thordarson, the LulzSec hackers eventually turned over some confidential documents to WikiLeaks that related to the US embassy in Iceland, as well as other hacked files, such as a huge trove of emails mined from Syrian government servers that were later released by WikiLeaks. Thordarson alleged that Assange spoke with Sabu over Skype during this time, and he showed me records of chats he had with Sabu that appear to support his version of events. Again, Sabu was secretly working as an FBI informant during his correspondence with WikiLeaks; FBI agents, who were monitoring Sabu's online activity 24/7 and directing his conduct, would have almost certainly been watching over his shoulder during any conversations with Assange or others.

In a bizarre twist, Thordarson himself later became an FBI informant, before he found out that Sabu, too, was working for the Bureau. (You can read the whole crazy backstory here.) WikiLeaks says Thordarson was a rogue operative and has accused the FBI of using "coercion and payments" in an effort to extract information that could be used against its staff in a prosecution. It is unclear whether Assange was personally involved at all in any attempt to solicit the hacking of foreign government computers.

Either way, one thing that is clear and undisputed is that Sabu was in contact with WikiLeaks while he was working for the FBI. And the new court document in Sabu's case strongly suggests to me that the contact was not some random occurrence — rather, it suggests it was part of a concerted FBI undercover sting operation aimed at implicating Assange and his colleagues in criminal activity.

The mention of "a particular subject’s role in soliciting cyber attacks on a foreign government" stood out to me immediately as a likely reference to the Assange-Thordarson-Sabu-Iceland affair, perhaps even intended as a warning shot from the Justice Department that this is an angle still being pursued. WikiLeaks seems to have noticed it, as well, tweeting on Saturday that the document contained an "apparent reference to [an] FBI operation against WL."

It is worth recalling that the FBI and the Justice Dept. still have an active and ongoing criminal investigation into WikiLeaks, a fact that was most recently confirmed just last week. But because of constitutional press freedom protections in the United States under the First Amendment, to prosecute any WikiLeaks staff for their role in publishing leaked classified US government documents would be untenable. That is precisely why it is far more likely that the FBI will be seeking to find other charges it can lay against Assange, such as conspiracy, and that is where I think Sabu comes into the frame. The new court document refers to an "existing investigation" and notes that while the information Sabu gleaned about the cyber attacks being solicited "has not resulted in any prosecutions to date," it remains "extremely significant." [Emphasis added.]

So watch this space. I expect more details about this dramatic debacle are going surface before long — possibly even in an indictment against Assange, if the FBI gets its way.

Tortyren - bestående av åratals häktning på några få kvadratmeter, till större delen under isolering - har upphört, för en person. För en annan fortsätter den.

Vi måste prata mer om det här: att vi, i "fina" Sverige, torterar, och om att åklagare, domare och kriminalvårdspersonal dagligen begår kriminella, omänskliga övergrepp.

Vi måste prata mer om etik, om människovärde, om grundlagens förbud mot tortyr och att det faktiskt finns ett ius cogens mot tortyr i internationell rätt. Det sista innebär att alla som deltagit i tortyren kan ställas inför rätta, oaktat den nationella lagstiftningen.

Man måste tala mer om detta på juristutbildningen, så att vi inte utbildar fler samvetslösa dårar, som kan tänka sig att göra vad som helst, bara de får en order. Borde inte universiteten skämmas över sina före detta studenter? Borde man inte skämmas över utbildningens kvalitet när de på fullt allvar tror att man kan vifta bort tortyranklagelser genom att muttra något om "Kollusionsfara"?

HOLYROOD has triggered a major diplomatic row with the US over a proposal to grant asylum to the "traitor" Edward Snowden in the event of independence.

Washington's top intelligence chief even made the incredible claim that Scotland should be more grateful to America for "saving" Europe from the Nazis during the Second World War.

It follows Tuesday's meeting of the Public Petitions Committee where MSPs considered a call for the former National Security Agency (NSA) analyst, who is now being sheltered in Moscow by Vladimir Putin, to be given political asylum in a separate Scotland.

Members of the committee expressed "sympathy" with Snowden's situation and the SNP's John Wilson even went as far to say, if Scotland had the power, he would make the offer now.

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