The lawsuit, filed this morning in the Southern District of New York, alleges that Pompeo – who headed the CIA between 2017 and 2018 before being appointed Secretary of State by Donald Trump – “oversaw and directed an extraordinary campaign of illegal espionage against Assange’s lawyers.” and others at the embassy,” the complainants said in a statement.
“We are suing on behalf of several people who went to the Ecuadorian embassy to visit Julian Assangey without their knowledge, had all their teams photographed and their conversations recorded by a company headed by Mike Pompeo,” he assured in a subsequent press release Richard Roth, Complaint Counsel.
Assangese has been in a British prison since April 2019. The US authorities have accused the Australian of some twenty crimes for publishing information and documents on his WikiLeaks portal exposing abuses by US troops in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Spanish company would be involved in illegal wiretapping
Between 2012 and 2019, Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London until April of that year, when he was arrested on an extradition order from the United States after the government of that Latin American country stripped him of his political asylum status.
That’s where the alleged wiretapping took place, which allegedly involved a Spanish company, Undercover Global, which is responsible for the embassy’s private security. The company and its owner David Morales also appear as defendants.
As Roth pointed out, “The US Constitution protects American citizens from government abuse, even when activities are conducted at a foreign embassy in a foreign country.” As Deborah Kerbeck, one of the plaintiffs, explained on Monday, she went to the embassy several times “to discuss sensitive legal matters”.
They copy the SIM cards and download data from the journalist team
“Upon arrival there was strict protocol for Julian’s protection. We were asked to hand over passports, cellphones, cameras, laptops, recorders and other electronic devices to the security guards in the lobby,” he said. Thanks to the investigation being carried out in Spain by the head of the Central Educational Court No. 5 of the National Court, Santiago Pedraz, they have now been able to find out what happened in the implementation of this alleged security protocol.
“At that point, they disassembled our phones, removed and photographed the SIM cards, and downloaded data from our electronic devices,” Kerbeck added. Judge Pedraz himself has asked US authorities to question Pompeo as a witness.
The plaintiffs include noted civil rights and human rights lawyer Margaret Ratner Kunstler, and national security journalists Charles Glass and John Goetz. The complaint filed is motivated “to protect their fundamental constitutional right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure,” something that marks “the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the complainants recalled in the statement.
Trump administration officials, they added, were conducting “an unprecedented campaign against WikiLeaks as of 2017.”
jov (ef, the independent)