A glittering array of Hollywood A-listers, rock stars and rappers turned out to celebrate the 20th birthday of Vice magazine on Friday 5 December.

While the likes of Scarlett Johansson, Jonah Hill, Lil Wayne, Pussy Riot and Andrew WK grabbed most of the headlines, for a major part of the online world it was the appearance of Hector Xavier Monsegur that was the most noteworthy aspect of the event.

Monsegur, better known as his online alias Sabu, is the hacker who turned informant for the FBI and helped send Jeremy Hammond to jail for 10 years, as well as helping to identify members of the LulzSec hacking group, of which he was the de facto leader, which led to their imprisonment.

Sabu walked free from a New York courtroom last May despite pleading guilty to taking part in cyber-attacks on the likes of Sony, Nintendo, Visa and Mastercard. The reason behind that was down to what the court called Monsegur's "extraordinarily valuable and productive" cooperation.

Monsegur was invited to the party by occasional Vice contributor Dan Stuckey, who highlighted his presence in this tweet:

Unsurprisingly, considering the pent up anger at Monsegur's actions among the Anonymous community, this was met with a vitriolic reaction.

FreeAnons, a group dedicated to providing "legal and moral support for activists facing prosecution for involvement, alleged or otherwise, in Anonymous actions", wrote the following reaction on its blog:

We have supported Stuckey and his work in the past. He has contributed many articles to Motherboard detailing the extent of FBI involvement in what is seen by many as the entrapment of Jeremy Hammond however, it is our opinion that what recently transpired was in extremely poor taste.

The reaction on Twitter was equally negative, ranging from more considered responses to outright hatred. Here is a selection of the more considered responses to Stuckey's tweet:

Jeremy Hammond is in prison thanks to him. Nothing funny or novelty worthy about this. @danstuckey @anonymouSabu — Cassandra ð¦ Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) December 6, 2014

Wtf do you have to say for yourself Dan? Sabu not only destroys lives, he is literally a cyber rapist. SCUM @danstuckey @VICE @freeanons — #UpdateNZ (@endarken) December 8, 2014

The reason you - & so many others - are upset @danstuckey took a selfie with Sabu is because Dan was considered an Anon — Asher Wolf (@Asher_Wolf) December 8, 2014

.@vicenews parties now include inviting FBI informants for photo ops with journalists. #vice20 I think you may have jumped the shark. — Anonymous (@AnonyOps) December 6, 2014

Jeremy Hammond has spent thousand days in prison for telling us the truth. Sabu has spent a night at the VICE party for telling his story. — Anonymous (@crymora) December 7, 2014

Though this is possibly our favourite reaction:

Stuckey, a contributor to Motherboard, is a journalist who is intimately involved with the Anonymous and Sabu story. He has been covering the story closely for the last 18 months and told IBTimes UK it is a story he has "dedicated his life to".

Stuckey added that when posting the picture on Twitter, he expected a reaction and that it was a "taste experiment".

He said: "I put out a thermometer to take some temperatures and a lot of people told me to rape Hector."

Sabu - The Movie

Stuckey is also working with Dell Cameron and Andrew Blake on SabuFiles.com, a long-term investigation into the informant and his backstory.

There have been rumours that Stuckey and his partners are working on a film about Sabu but Stuckey said this is just speculation at the moment.

He said: "I'd like to be involved in the making of a film but have no agreements and nothing in writing as of yet. So that's a rumour at best."

Speaking about the reaction to his picture of Monsegur, Stuckey said the type of investigations he carried out, and those typified by Vice, necessitate meeting with and talking to undesirable characters.

"As I've said elsewhere, and as I believe is evident in mine or Vice's work. We hang out with unlikeable people. Very unlikeable people," he said.

It is clear feelings of anger towards Sabu remain strong among the Anonymous community who feel betrayed by his actions, and pictures of him partying with rock stars and Hollywood A-listers while people like Hammond remain in jail, will not do anything to help that situation.

However, the strong reaction also shows just how much interest there is in Sabu's story - and that is what Stuckey and his partners are clearly interested in investigating.