The state prosecutor, Lára V. Júlíusdóttir, had called to witness numerous police officers, parliamentary security guards as well as the bureau chief of parliament, Helgi Bernódusson. The plan was no doubt to have the witnesses attest to the violent nature of the supposed attack and the determination of those accused to inflict harm, to prove that the accused were members of a conspiracy to compromise the “independence and sanctity” of Alþingi, a crime carrying a minimum sentence of one year in jail.
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An amalgamation of legal provisions from around the world that deal with source and libel protection, freedom of information and transparency, the IMMI proposal has garnered international attention as the most comprehensive legislative protection package for investigative journalism and free speech that the world has seen to date. Notably, three of the five primary authors of the Parliamentary proposal— Julian Assange, Rop Gonggrijp, and Birgitta Jónsdóttir—are among others being probed by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of the ongoing criminal investigation into WikiLeaks' disclosure of thousands of leaked State department cables beginning in November 2010.

Yet for many freedom of information activists following the transparency movement—WikiLeaks is not the point. “This is a much more complicated story than just WikiLeaks,” says Smári McCarthy, co-founder of the Icelandic Digital Freedom Society, ex-WikiLeaks volunteer, and one of the authors of the IMMI proposal who as of yet is not visibly under investigation by the DOJ. “To focus on them is like to focus on one grain of sand on a very big beach."...