Human rights activists are calling for Assange’s release before the London court. Photo: Portal.
Lawyers and journalists who visited Australian activist and investigative journalist Julian Assange during his asylum stay at the Ecuadorian embassy in London filed a lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its director Mike Pompeo (2017-2018) on Monday. , for espionage.
In a virtual press conference, the plaintiffs explained that UnderCover Global, the Spanish company in charge of the embassy’s private security, photographed and downloaded information from their computers and cellphones and recorded the conversations with the founder of WikiLeaks on behalf of the CIA .
“We are suing on behalf of several individuals who went to the Ecuadorian embassy to visit Julian Assange and had all of their equipment photographed and their conversations recorded by a company headed by Mike Pompeo,” said Richard Roth, one of the lawyers for the Australians.
Visitors (lawyers, journalists and doctors) often carry confidential information on their computers, said attorney Richard Roth, who reminded that the US Constitution protects its citizens from government abuse, even if it happens in a foreign embassy or another country.
Deborah Kerbeck, another plaintiff, claimed she went to the embassy several times “to discuss sensitive legal matters.”
“On arrival there was strict protocol in place to protect Julian. We were asked to hand over passports, mobile phones, cameras, laptops, recorders and other electronic devices to the security guards in the lobby,” he said.
As they later learned, “on these occasions they disassembled our phones, removed and photographed the SIM cards and downloaded data from our electronic devices”.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in the Southern District of New York, alleges that Pompeo oversaw and directed “an extraordinary campaign of unlawful espionage against Assange’s lawyers and others at the Ecuadorian embassy.”
According to plaintiffs, “Pompeo not only led the effort, but his agents, with the help of Sheldon Adelson’s security team, also recruited David Morales, then CEO of UC Global, to implement the violations.”
Assange, 51, has been in a high-security prison in London since April 2019, when then-Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno revoked the political asylum granted by his predecessor Rafael Correa seven years ago.
Last June, the British government agreed to his extradition to the United States, which wants to try him for exposing WikiLeaks war crimes committed by his military in Iraq and Afghanistan and other secrets of US diplomacy.
The Australian journalist’s defense appealed against Home Secretary Priti Patel’s extradition order, and the case could return to the High Court in London in the autumn.
If Assange is extradited and tried in a US court, he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison based on the 17 charges against him.
Spying on the Ecuadorian ambassador came to light several times during Assange’s extradition trial.
Two former agents from Spanish firm UC Global, who testified anonymously, said they spied on people visiting the Australian journalist and passed the information to US intelligence agencies.
In September 2021, digital news platform Yahoo News reported that the CIA, then led by Pompeo, was discussing plans to kidnap and assassinate the WikiLeaks founder at the Ecuadorian embassy.
Last June, Australian lawyer Jennifer Robinson, who is a member of Assange’s defense team, revealed that she had reached an agreement with the UK government after it admitted to the European Court of Human Rights that it had abused her during the time his client was held under surveillance at the diplomatic mission granted asylum.
(With information from PL, EFE and DW)