Assange gives evidence in Spanish case
against security contractor
By
Thomas Scripps
December 23, 2019 "Information
Clearing House"
- WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange was brought from
Belmarsh Prison yesterday to appear in
person at Westminster Magistrates Court and
provide video-link witness testimony in the
Spanish prosecution of David Morales, the
founder of security firm UC Global. Morales,
a former Spanish military officer, is
accused of spying on Assange in the
Ecuadorian embassy and was charged in
October with privacy violation, bribery and
money laundering.
The
hearing was held in private session. No
members of the media or the public were
allowed inside the courtroom to see or hear
Assange, on the remarkable grounds that the
Spanish prosecution of UC Global involves
“matters of national security.” His
appearance took place 24 hours after he
appeared via video-link in a case management
hearing ahead of the scheduled February 24
trial on the application by the United
States to extradite him. Assange has been
charged with 17 counts of espionage and is
threatened with life imprisonment over his
role in WikiLeaks’ publication of the
documents leaked by whistleblower Chelsea
Manning which exposed US war crimes and
diplomatic intrigues.
The
Morales case has major implications for the
US extradition attempt. UC Global was
contracted by the Ecuadorian government to
provide security for its embassy in London,
where Assange sought and was granted
political asylum in June 2012. Instead of
protecting Assange, Morales’s company is
known to have illegally monitored and
recorded every aspect of his personal life
from 2015 until March 2018. Investigations
published by Spanish newspaper El Pais
and Italian newspaper La Repubblica
have uncovered evidence that leaves little
doubt the surveillance was carried out on
behalf of the US Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA).
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Among the numerous conversations that were
illegally spied on were confidential
discussions between Assange and his lawyers
and doctors, meaning his fundamental legal
right to privacy in these matters was
violated.
Assange’s British lawyers made clear again
yesterday that they intend to use the
evidence arising from the UC Global case to
argue that the extradition application
should be rejected out-of-hand, as it
further proves he will not receive a fair
trial in the US. A major precedent was set
in the 1970s, when the case against Pentagon
Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was
quashed following the revelation that
President Richard Nixon had overseen spying
on consultations between Ellsberg and his
doctors.
The
importance of the UC Global case was
underscored when British authorities
initially refused to comply with the
European Investigation Order (EIO) issued by
Spanish Judge José de la Mata requesting
that Assange be made available to provide
witness testimony. His appearance yesterday
only took place due to considerable media
coverage of a formal complaint by de la
Mata. El Pais observed that the
backdown took place because Britain’s stance
was “viewed as resistance to an
investigation that could hinder Assange’s
extradition to the US.”
Morales and UC Global greatly enhanced
security equipment and procedures at the
Ecuadorian embassy in 2017, the same year
Trump announced a stepping up of US
intelligence operations against Assange.
This included fitting cameras with recording
devices and putting secret microphones
throughout the spaces used by Assange in the
embassy.
According to La Repubblica
journalist Stefania Maurizi, who obtained
files evidencing UC Global’s spying
operation, among those recorded were
doctors, journalists, politicians and
celebrities who visited Assange. UC Global
compiled profiles on Assange’s London-based
lawyer Jennifer Robinson and the head of his
legal team in Spain, Baltasar Garzon. A
series of photographs seen by Maurizi shows
that Garzon was also followed. Her own phone
and USB sticks were tampered with.
Maurizi wrote on November 18: “Nothing and
no one was spared. Even the most inviolable
meetings were violated—video and audio
footage seen by Repubblica show a
half-naked Julian Assange during a medical
check-up, the Ecuadorian ambassador Carlos
Abad Ortiz and his staff during one of their
diplomatic meetings, two of Assange’s
lawyers, Gareth Peirce and Aitor Martinez,
entering the women’s bathroom for a private
conversation with their client.
“It was Julian
Assange who suggested holding the legal
meetings inside the women’s toilet due to
his suspicion of being under intense
surveillance. Lawyers had considered it
paranoid on Assange’s part, and UC Global
had reassured them on this count, but in
reality microphones had even been placed
inside the women’s toilet.” (See: “A
massive scandal: how Assange, his doctors,
lawyers and visitors were all spied on for
the US”)
According to the New York Times,
the 61-page court filing issued by the
Spanish public prosecutor states that the
information collected in the embassy was
sent to UC Global’s headquarters in Jerez de
la Frontera, in southern Spain.
In
a hearing before Judge José de la Mata,
Morales has claimed that all recordings were
taken on behalf of the Ecuadorian secret
service and that the work was known to the
country’s ambassador. He claims that “there
was absolutely no outside access” to any
information gathered inside the embassy.
However, testimony taken from former company
employees alleges that Morales travelled
once or twice a month to the United States
and took hard disks of recordings with him.
The employees also allege that Morales
ordered them to keep these trips secret from
Ecuadorian officials.
In
2015, Morales signed a contract with the
casino company Las Vegas Sands, which the
prosecution claims functioned as his
go-between with the CIA. The owner of Las
Vegas Sands is Sheldon Adelson, “one of the
main donors to the Republican Party and a
personal friend of Donald Trump,” according
to El Pais.
Morales is alleged to have returned from a
security fair in Las Vegas and told an
employee: “From now on, we play in the first
league… We are now working for the dark
side”—explaining that this meant working for
US agencies.
Speaking outside the court yesterday, the
former Ecuadorian legal consul in London,
Fidel Navraez, rejected Morales’s claim that
the surveillance was carried out on behalf
of Ecuadorian agencies. “That company [UC
Global] was contracted by Ecuador in order
to protect the embassy, protect Julian
Assange, protect the embassy staff… but it
is a corrupt company, we know that now,” he
stated.
Illegal spying is just one of the host of
outrages perpetrated against Assange by the
US, British, Swedish, Ecuadorian and
Australian governments. On Thursday,
Assange’s legal team submitted several
bundles of evidence to be presented in his
defence against US extradition early next
year. These covered the blatantly political
nature of the Espionage Act charges levelled
by the US government, evidence relating to
Chelsea Manning, public statements by US
politicians denouncing Assange and WikiLeaks
which jeopardise any prospect of a fair
trial, as well as evidence relating to abuse
of due process, vindictive prison conditions
and denial of medical treatment.
Speaking with the New York Times,
Amy Jeffress, a former Justice Department
attaché at the American embassy in London,
claimed that the illegality exposed in the
UC Global case was not relevant to Assange’s
extradition. According to the Times,
she asserted that “the legal standard is
whether extradition would comply with
Britain’s Human Rights Act, which protects
the right to privacy but balances it against
considerations like national security and
fighting crime.”
Such statements serve only to underscore the
hostility within the political establishment
for the fundamental legal rights and
democratic principles at stake in the case
of Julian Assange. Assange has never
committed a crime. In the public interest,
and in partnership with major newspapers
around the world, WikiLeaks published leaked
documents that revealed rampant criminality
on the part of the American and other
governments.
The
relentless nine-year persecution of
Assange—including the flagrant violation of
his human rights and the monitoring of his
every word and movement while he was
supposed to be protected by political
asylum—is aimed at terrorising all would-be
whistleblowers and journalists into silence.
This article was originally published by "WSWS"
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