Watchman comment: I think this guy made someone or some intel agency very angry. Now, we know why Assange can't leave the Ecuadorean embassy.
On 20 August, Arjen
Kamphuis, a leading Dutch cybersecurity expert, checked out of his hotel in
Bodø, northern Norway. He had told friends that he planned to take the train to
Trondheim, 10 hours away.
He never boarded the
train. Nor, two days later at the supposed end of his holiday, did he catch his
return flight to Amsterdam. An intensive search by Norwegian police, and two
Dutch investigators dispatched to help them has failed to locate him.
A kayak believed to
belong to Kamphuis, who advised governments, corporations, journalists and
activists on information security, was pulled from the sea about 50km from Bodø
on Thursday, police said, the day after an amateur fisherman found some of his
belongings – reportedly including an ID card – floating in the water.
But mobile phone
records show that 10 days after the Dutchman was seen leaving his hotel, both
his work and personal mobile phones were briefly switched on – with German SIM
cards inserted – more than 1,700km from the small northern town, at Vikeså near
Stavanger.
Police said on
Thursday they were “holding all possibilities open in respect to what might
have happened” to Kamphuis and pursuing three distinct lines of inquiry: a
“voluntary disappearance” including a possible suicide; an accident; or foul
play.
A foldable kayak pulled from the
sea by police in connection with the Arjen Kamphuis case the day after an
amateur fisherman found some of his belongings – reportedly including an ID
card – floating in the water. Photograph: Norwegian Police Handout/EPA
But if investigators
have no clear idea of what happened, the internet has plenty - mainly because
on 1 September the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks tweeted to its 5.4 million followers:
“@JulianAssange associate and author of ‘Information Security for Journalists’
@ArjenKamphuis has disappeared.”
The anti-secrecy
organization has since published several updates and comments on the
investigation, describing Kamphuis’s disappearance as “strange” and highlighting the fact that his phone was activated a
long way from where his belongings were found.
The site’s followers
have suggested variously that Kamphuis, an outspoken campaigner for online
privacy rights, was kidnapped or even murdered by the US, British or Russian
secret services.
Police have denied
any connection between Kamphuis’s disappearance and the fact that Bodø houses a
Norwegian military airbase, and that buried deep inside a nearby mountain is a
major part of the Scandinavian country’s secret cyber defense operations.
With an internet
campaign using the hashtag #FindArjen to locate him, unconfirmed sightings of
Kamphuis have also been reported in Sweden, Denmark, Germany and several parts
of Norway.
The Dutchman’s
friends have accused Wikileaks of using his disappearance for its own benefit,
and are upset that some media reports have unquestioningly repeated the organization’s
claim was an Assange “associate”.
“I hate how overblown Arjen’s Wikileaks
connection is becoming,” said one, Ancilla van der Leest. “He advised many
parties and journalistic organizations on infosecurity. In this light he was
also a ‘Reuters associate’.”
Dutch media have
reported that the Dutchman helped some Wikileaks members with advice on
avoiding cybersnooping and government surveillance, the subject of a book he
co-wrote with Silkie Carlo, but it is unclear how often or regularly he worked
with the site.
There are also unconfirmed reports that he visited
Assange in Ecuador’s London embassy, where the Australian is living because he
fears extradition to the US if he leaves the building.
Carlo, who is also
the director of Big Brother Watch, tweeted: “WikiLeaks might want to make this
sound like it’s about them, but it is not ... It makes me, and others, feel
sick to my stomach to see Arjen being missing/out of contact reported like a
WikiLeaks murder mystery.”
Carlo said Kamphuis
had “gone off grid before. It can be good for the soul. I was worried before,
and it is worrying now. But I have strong faith he will come back into the
welcoming arms of his friends when he is ready, in his own time”.
Van der Leest told Dutch radio that while Kamphuis
“certainly didn’t come across as someone who was planning to be away for a long
time. He had lots of appointments”.
Dutch police have
said Kamphuis bought a foldable kayak before leaving the Netherlands,
telling the salesman he was going canoeing in the fjords.
Other friends said
Kamphuis was no daredevil. “If he’s heading into dangerous territory, he always
seeks out company,” Helma de Boer told NRC Handelsblad. “And
he always has good equipment. His motto is: ‘better safe than sorry’.”
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