Judge Pedraz asks the US Intelligence Committee to report on the espionage of a Spanish company to Assange
Congressional body asks agencies if they monitored Wikileaks founder
Judge Santiago Pedraz has demanded that the United States through a rogatory commission (request for judicial assistance) send the information received by the Intelligence Committee (United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) of the US Congress to his court of the National High Court. UU on the investigation opened by that body to different US intelligence agencies for espionage on Julian Assange perpetrated by a Spanish company during his stay at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. In several of his orders, the magistrate has already pointed to the CIA as a possible recipient of the material.
Adam Schiff, president of the Intelligence Committee, requested in October 2021 the different North American information services to inform him about the alleged interference of their agents in the espionage to which the founder of Wikileaks was subjected during his stay at the London diplomatic mission by the company UC Global S.L, based in Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz), and owned by former Spanish military officer David Morales. Schiff’s initiative came after Yahoo News published a report in which CIA agents acknowledged that there was a plan to kidnap Assange from the embassy in 2017 and admitted that their conversations were monitored inside the embassy.
UCE Global SL was the company in charge of the security of the Ecuadorian embassy and an investigation by EL PAÍS revealed in 2019 that Morales and his employees recorded the private conversations of Assange and his lawyers for months, and spied on dozens of his visitors, his doctors personal, congressmen, journalists and lawyers. The publication in this newspaper of the audios and videos of the espionage led to the arrest of Morales and the presentation of a complaint by the cyberactivist against the former soldier. Since then, the National High Court has been investigating him for alleged crimes against privacy and the secrecy of lawyer-client communications, misappropriation, bribery and money laundering. The owner of UCE Global SL is on parole.
The espionage on Assange, in which the Intelligence Committee of the US Congress is now interested, took place when the Justice of that country was preparing the request for the extradition of the Australian for revealing secret information on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The British Justice has already agreed to hand him over and the British Government has given the green light. The case is pending the resources that the defense has raised. The cyberactivist remained a refugee for seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London thanks to the support provided by then-president Rafael Correa. With the coming to power of the government of Lenin Moreno, Assange was expelled from the embassy in April 2019 and detained by Scotland Yard agents (London Metropolitan Police).
In his rogatory commission, Pedraz describes in detail the espionage to which Assange was subjected at the embassy and highlights that among those spied on was the Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher, the then head of the National Intelligence Service of Ecuador (Senain) Rommy Vallejo and the former president Correa himself. The judge also requested, in another previous rogatory commission, the testimony of Mike Pompeo, former director of the CIA and former Secretary of State during the Donald Trump administration, and William Evanina, former head of US Counterintelligence.
The judges point to the CIA
It is not the first time that the National High Court has requested judicial assistance from the US to investigate this case. Former judge José de la Mata, Pedraz’s predecessor in Court number 5 of the National High Court, previously sent a rogatory commission in which he asked to be provided with the IP addresses from which the UC server had been accessed
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A little bit of ´justice´ practiced in different places could add up to true justice?
I am really hanging to this points urged by Spanish Judges to American Intelligence Services in order to give true collaboration to fixe that Cia was spying Julian Assange.
Encouraging to see the Spanish courts are still persuing this, although the case is moving incredibly slowly.