Police hid alleged Assange spy 'CIA' folder in original investigation
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The report says the former marine and Spanish soldier spied on the meetings that Assange and his lawyers conducted at the Embassy of Ecuador in the UK, stored the data in a folder marked "CIA", and sent them to the agency.
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Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2014 (AFP)
El Pais reported on Monday that the owner of the Spanish security company UC Global, S.L. that spied on Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, David Morales, stored his files for the work he did for the CIA on his laptop.
The former marine and Spanish soldier spied on the meetings that Assange and his lawyers conducted at the Embassy of Ecuador in the UK, stored the data in a folder marked 'CIA', and sent them to the US intelligence agency.
Assange has been at the Belmarsh prison in London for more than 1,500 days. He was unlawfully charged in the US with 17 counts of "espionage" and one count of computer misuse, connected to him leaking tens of thousands of military and diplomatic documents that exposed US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The data was also stored in folders titled 'Embassy' and 'Videos' alongside others, but none of these folders appeared in the initial report made by police when he was arrested in September 2019, although they were all uploaded to a storage system within the judicial systems.
Under the 'USA' directory was a folder called 'CIA', and in it was another folder marked 'Videos' with recordings filmed via hidden cameras and microphones used by UC Global installed in the Embassy of Ecuador to monitor the WikiLeaks founder.
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Emails were also found from Morales in which he stated to be working for “the American client” and confessed that he had “gone over to the dark side” by working with “American intelligence". To his employees, he once said that “those in control are the friends of the USA.”
Aitor Martínez, Assange’s lawyer, addressed a letter to the judge about an “enormous disparity” between the evidence in the original copy made by the police and the documents just found.
“To this is the added inactivity of the police unit, which, until now, hasn’t submitted any official letter or report about the initial copies, which, as we now know, were biased and did not reflect the reality of the material of interest to this case,” the lawyer said, after which he requested an extension of 6 months to the investigation into Morales.
Morales is currently on provisional release, as he remains under investigation for crimes against privacy, violation of the confidentiality of attorney-client communications, misappropriation, and money laundering.
This comes after The Sydney Morning Herald wrote on Wednesday that US authorities are attempting to gather new evidence about Assange in an apparent effort to strengthen their case against him even as hopes grow among his supporters that a diplomatic breakthrough will soon see him released from prison.
Julian Assange's lawyer recently cited suicide as a possible outcome if the Australian is extradited to the #US on his espionage charges.
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) October 30, 2021
Here's a timeline of some key dates from Assange’s life.#JulianAssange #FreeAssange pic.twitter.com/FTSGibxwQO
