Wikileaks associate who mysteriously vanished a year ago in Norway ‘probably had a kayaking accident’ say police
- Arjen Kamphuis, then 47, disappeared from northern Norwegian town of Bodo
- Police say WikiLeaks associate probably swept to sea after kayaking
- The cybersecurity expert’s body has not yet been recovered by police
- Kamphuis best known for his book titled ‘Information Security for Journalists’
A Dutch WikiLeaks associate who went missing under mysterious circumstances a year ago probably had a kayaking accident, Norwegian police said Friday.
They added that the body of Arjen Kamphuis, a cybersecurity expert then aged 47, is still missing.
Kamphuis disappeared after leaving his hotel in the northern Norwegian town of Bodo on 20 August 2018.
He was due to fly back to Amsterdam two days later, on the 22 August from Trondheim airport, but never caught that flight.
His disappearance triggered a wave of conspiracy theories on social media, ranging from CIA and Russian involvement to a mission to carry out a secret project for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Arjen Kamphuis, pictured above, went missing from the small northern Norwegian town of Bodo on 20 August 2018. The cybersecurity expert had links to the WikiLeaks website which published classified information from the Pentagon, sparking conspiracy theories that there was foul play involved in the Dutch man’s disappearance. Police today said that his ‘mysterious disappearance’ was ‘most likely’ the result of running into an accident while kayaking in a fjord
The 47-year-old was best known for his book titled ‘Information Security for Journalists’ which advised the press on how to protect themselves from government’s online information gathering
Then police discovered a kayak in the same area where a fisherman had found some of Kamphuis’s personal belongings floating in the waters about 30 miles east of Bodo.
‘The police have concluded that Mr Kamphuis most likely suffered an accident in the evening of August 20, 2018, while kayaking in the Skjerstad Fjord a few kilometres north of the village of Rognan in Nordland County in northern Norway, and was subsequently lost at sea,’ the police said in a statement.
‘His body has still not been recovered,’ they added.
Kamphuis was an associate of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, and he was meant to fly back to Amsterdam just two days after his disappearance. WikiLeaks said that he was booked for a flight from Trondheim to Amsterdam on the 22 August
WikiLeaks, which published secret US military documents and diplomatic cables in 2010, called Kamphuis’s disappearance ‘strange.’
The mystery deepened when a phone linked to Kamphuis was briefly switched on in an area near the southwestern city of Stavanger, located 1,000 miles from Bodo, on 30 August last year.
But on Friday, police explained that two truck drivers from eastern Europe had found the phone, a laptop and other items belonging to Kamphuis while they were fishing in the spot where his kayak was found and took the items with them.
‘The police have no reason to believe that the truck drivers were involved in the disappearance of Mr Kamphuis in any other way,’ the police statement said.