[ad_1]
Plans to poison or kidnap Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy were discussed between US intelligence sources and a private security firm that extensively spied on the WikiLeaks co-founder, a court was informed.
Details of the alleged spying operation against Assange and anyone who visited him at the embassy were presented Wednesday in his extradition case, as evidence from a former employee of a Spanish security firm, UC Global.
Microphones were hidden to monitor Assange’s meetings with lawyers, his fingerprint was obtained from a glass, and there was even a plot to obtain a diaper from a baby who had been brought in on regular visits to the embassy, according to the witness, whose evidence took the form of a written statement.
UC Global founder and director David Morales had said “the Americans” had wanted to establish paternity, but the plan was thwarted when the then-employee alerted the boy’s mother.
On Tuesday, the former employee and another person who had been involved with UC Global were granted anonymity after being told at the hearing that they feared Morales, or others related to him in the United States, might seek to harm them.
Details of his written evidence were read at the Old Bailey in London on Wednesday by Mark Summers QC, one of Assange’s lawyers, who is fighting extradition to the US on charges related to leaks of classified documents that allegedly They expose US war crimes and abuses.
James Lewis QC, representing the US government, told the court on Tuesday that the US case is likely that the evidence from former UC Global employees was “totally irrelevant.”
In the test, one of the witnesses said that UC Global started with meager contracts and in fact the only one at the beginning had been signed in October 2015 with the government of Ecuador in order to provide security for the daughters of the country’s president and his embassy in London.
However, they said this changed when Morales attended a security industry fair in Las Vegas, where he obtained a contract with Las Vegas Sands, a company owned by American billionaire Sheldon Adelson. The American was a friend and supporter of Donald Trump, who at the time was a presidential candidate.
Morales was said to have returned to the company’s offices in Jerez, in southern Spain, and announced: “We will play in the big league.” The witness added that Morales said the company had turned to what the latter described as “the dark side.” This allegedly involved cooperating with the US authorities, who, according to Morales, would ensure they secure contracts around the world.
An increasingly sophisticated operation was launched to monitor Assange and would accelerate after Trump took office in 2017, the witness said, adding that Morales would make frequent trips to the United States with recorded data.
“He [Morales] He showed at times a true obsession with following up on lawyers because our American friends were requesting it, ”added the witness, who held a stake in UC Global for a time.
The other witness, an IT expert who had joined UC Global in 2015, also referred to Morales’ trips to the United States, who said he spoke of it in terms of “going to the dark side.”
In December 2017, the witness was tasked with installing new cameras at the embassy that, unlike previous cameras, would also record audio. They said Morales later instructed that the cameras should have a live broadcast capability “so that our friends in the United States” could access the embassy in real time.
This “alarmed” the then employee who said it was not technically feasible. Morales’ response, he alleged, was to send him a document with detailed instructions on how to do so.
“Obviously, the document must have been provided by a third party, which the witness expects to be US intelligence,” Summers said, while reading parts of the presentation.
The witness was said to have refused, saying it was manifestly illegal.
The witness also claimed that the company’s contacts in the United States became nervous when it appeared that Assange might be about to obtain a diplomatic passport from Ecuador to travel to a third state.
On one occasion in 2017, they also recalled that Morales said his US contacts had suggested that “more extreme measures” should be implemented against Assange’s visitors.
“There was a suggestion that the embassy door would be left open to allow people to come in from the outside and kidnap or poison Assange,” they told the court. The witness alleged that Morales said these suggestions were being considered with his contacts in the United States.
The witness also recounted that he was asked to put stickers on the window of the embassy rooms used by Assange. They said Morales had claimed this would help “American friends” point laser microphones at windows, but that they had been frustrated that Assange was implementing “white noise” countermeasures.
Assange was removed by the police in April 2019 from the embassy, where he had taken refuge seven years earlier to avoid extradition to Sweden for a case of sexual assault that was later dropped.
The hearing continues.