An Icelandic MP says Britain spied on Iceland while wrestling to rescue its citizens' cash from collapsed Icelandic banks after the financial crisis. Birgitta Jónsdóttir claims she received a tip-off from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Jónsdóttir, who represents Iceland's Pirate Party, maintains that the UK's intelligence agencies
systematically intercepted messages sent by Icelandic negotiators
when Britain tried to recover savers’ cash held in the country’s
banks that went bankrupt.
Jónsdóttir, a prominent WikiLeaks supporter, said that she was
tipped off to the spying in 2010 by Assange, Iceland's Visir
newspaper reported.
Having received the tip-off, she warned members of Iceland’s
negotiating team not to send emails to each other.
"The UK authorities had very good access to everything that
was going on between members of the team. It is the role of
intelligence, for example MI5, to spy on other countries,
especially if it concerns their national interests. Their duty
was to gather information and intelligence about us, and the duty
of the Icelandic government was to do everything to protect us
against such espionage," Jónsdóttir told the newspaper.
The revelation could reignite tensions between the UK and
Iceland, which were stoked in 2008 when the UK government used
anti-terrorism legislation to freeze an Icelandic bank’s assets
in the UK. The British Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time,
Alastair Darling, seized the funds of Landsbanki’s Internet bank,
Icesave, to protect UK depositors’ money after the Icelandic
government reacted to Landsbanki’s toxic debts by nationalizing
the bank.
Last week, Britain got involved in another major spy scandal when
it was reported that the UK has been allegedly using its Berlin
embassy to spy on the nearby Bundestag, as well as the office of
Chancellor Angela Merkel.
A new report also revealed that British intelligence agency GCHQ
allegedly helped its counterparts in France, Germany,
Spain and Sweden develop methods of mass surveillance of internet
and phone traffic in the last five years.
Documents supplied by former National Security Agency contractor
Edward Snowden to the Guardian newspaper show the UK Government
Communications Headquarters’ enormous influence throughout
Europe. GCHQ is part of the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence-sharing
partnership between the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand. The documents detail how the agency developed and
promoted spying processes, built relationships with
telecommunication companies and evaded national laws that
restrict the surveillance powers of intelligence agencies.
Earlier reports revealed by Snowden showed that the US has been
monitoring the communications of up to 35 world leaders,
including Merkel and Brazilian President. Communications of
hundreds of millions of people across the world were also
monitored, the leaked documents revealed, including British,
French, Spanish and American citizens.