The Islandic newspaper Stundid reported Saturday that a man it calls a major witness in the U.S. Justice Department’s indictment of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has recanted important parts of his testimony.

The man, a 28-year-old Islander with a varied criminal record named Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, reportedly told the biweekly newspaper he made up important accusations in the case built by the FBI.

The Stundid story, headlined “Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment,” is HERE.

“A major witness in the United States’ Department of Justice case against Julian Assange,” it begins, “has admitted to fabricating key accusations in the indictment against the Wikileaks founder. The witness, who has a documented history [of] 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 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 story about the interview (which was presumably conducted in Icelandic) does not quote Thordarson, but it does quote Ögmundur Jónasson, Iceland’s minister of the interior from 2011 to 2013:

“They were trying to use things here [in Iceland] and use people in our country to spin a web, a cobweb that would catch Julian Assange,” Jónasson said.

“What I have been pondering ever since,” he said, “is if the spinning of the web had already started then with the acceptance of the letter rogatory establishing cooperation that they could use as a pretext for later visits.”

An entity called wikileaks.shop, which sells items of clothing bearing pro-Wikileaks and pro-Assange messages, quotes the fugitive National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden as saying, “This is the end of the case against Julian Assange.”

— Mark Channing Miller