They denounce the CIA for spying through a Spanish company on journalists and lawyers who visited Julian Assange

A group of lawyers and journalists announced on Monday a complaint against the CIA and its then director, Mike Pompeo, whom they accuse of having spied on their conversations during visits to the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, while he was in asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy. in London. “We are suing on behalf of several people who went to the Ecuadorian embassy to visit Julian Assange and, unknown to them, all of their equipment was photographed and their conversations were recorded by a company under the direction of Mike Pompeo,” Richard Roth, one of the Australian’s lawyers, said at a press conference. The 51-year-old activist remains in Belmarsh maximum security prison in London while his appeal against his surrender to Washington is resolved. They accuse the Australian of twenty crimes for the information and documents that he leaked on his WikiLeaks portal, in which he exposed the abuses committed by the t American clothes in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Spanish company Between 2012 and 2019, Assange took refuge in the Embassy of Ecuador in London, until in April of that year he was arrested on an extradition order from the United States, after the Government that Latin American country would withdraw his political asylum status. It is there that the alleged wiretapping took place, in which a Spanish company, Undercover Global, responsible for the private security of the Embassy, ​​was allegedly involved. The company and its owner, David Morales, also appear as defendants. The company and its owner have already been investigated by the National Court in Spain. In fact, Morales was arrested in September 2019, and was released shortly after. The businessman has always denied that he spied on Assange and has defended that his services for Ecuadorian diplomacy were legal. As Deborah Kerbeck, one of the plaintiffs, explained on Monday, she went to the embassy several times “to discuss delicate legal matters.” Upon arrival there was a strict protocol for Julian’s protection. We were asked that passports, mobile phones, cameras, laptops, recording devices and other electronic equipment be handed over to the security guards in the lobby.” “It was at this time, they later learned, that they allegedly “disassembled our phones, removed and photographed SIM cards, and downloaded data from our electronic equipment,” it added. appeared in the Southern District of New York on Monday morning and alleges that Pompeo oversaw and directed “a extraordinary campaign of illegal espionage on Assange’s lawyers and others inside the embassy.” Not only did Pompeo lead 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,” the plaintiffs assert.