The State Attorney Bogi Nilsson decided to stop the investigation of the alleged phone tapping of the office phone of former Foreign Minister Jón Baldvin Hannibalsson yesterday.
Nilsson had initially requested that the sheriff in Akranes, Ólafur Hauksson, investigate the alleged phone tapping. The allegations were regarding the office phones of Jón Baldvin Hannibalsson, who was Foreign Minister from 1988 to 1995, and of Árni Páll Árnason, who worked at the Foreign Ministry from 1992 to 1994. RÚV reports.
A statement issued by the State Attorney’s Office says: “Nothing was revealed during the investigation that supported the accusations of Jón Baldvin Hannibalsson and Árni Páll Árnason that their phones had been tapped and that they had possibly been spied on while they worked at the Foreign Ministry.”
Reports were taken from several individuals who worked at the police, the Office of Immigration, the customs and the post office, that could have known about the phone tapping, and a statement was taken from the sheriff in Reykjavík about how phones are tapped.
In October, Baldvinsson told RÚV that he had asked a specialist in telecommunications to investigate whether his office phone was being tapped in 1993, and that the specialist had concluded that it was. Baldvinsson did not reveal the specialist’s name during the investigation.
Árni Páll Árnason had claimed that a man had told him to be careful about his comments when using his office phone, but Árnason did not reveal the name of that man.
To read more about the phone tapping, click here.
