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JULIAN ASSANGE

WikiLeaks’ Assange testifies against Spanish firm in embassy spying case

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Friday testified in his legal case against a Spanish private security firm that he claims spied on him while he was holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London.

WikiLeaks' Assange testifies against Spanish firm in embassy spying case
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's lawyer Aitor Martinez answers journalists' questions at Spain's National Court in Madrid. Photo: AFP

Assange, who is currently serving time at a high-security prison in Britain, answered questions from a judge at Spain's National Court in Madrid, testifying by videoconference from Westminster Magistrates Court in London, his legal team said.

Spain's top criminal court is investigating whether Undercover Global Ltd, which was responsible for security at the embassy, spied on 48-year-old Australian and passed on information to the United States.

The case is key to Assange's efforts to fight an extradition request by the US Justice Department which is pushing to have him put on trial for leaking hundreds of thousands of secret US military and diplomatic documents in 2010.

The documents exposed US rights abuses including the unreported killing of Iraqi civilians, but also put sources named in the documents at risk and were used to weaken democratic alliances.

“We are pleased that Mr. Assange was able to express himself regarding this alleged spying which was supposedly coordinated from the United States,” one of his lawyers, Aitor Martinez, told reporters outside the Madrid court after Assange testified.

“Given the evidence that has been submitted, we feel that obviously the extradition request against him should be rejected because there are no guarantees in the United States” that his rights will be respected, he added.

Assange's legal team argues he was “subjected to widespread interference on a massive scale by the American authorities, violating his confidential communications with his lawyers, among other rights.”

READ ALSO: Court probes Spanish firm's spying on Assange at Ecuadorian embassy

“The information gathered by this firm — through the alleged use of video cameras which also captured audio, hidden microphones, copying identity documents, monitoring the electronic devices and mobile phones of visitors, among other things — ended up in the hands of the US intelligence services.”

There was a “huge body of evidence” to back the claim, coming from both company data as well as from protected witnesses who were formerly employed by the firm, the source said.

As well as installing cameras, Undercover Global is suspected of installing microphones in places as diverse as the base of a fire extinguisher and in the women's toilets, where Assange held many meetings for fear of being spied on.

They were allegedly able to record discussions with his lawyers as well as details of medical visits, with the information then transferred to servers that were accessible to the US intelligence services.

Assange took refuge inside the Ecuadoran embassy in 2012, fleeing what he claimed was a politically-motivated extradition order for his return to Sweden for questioning in a sexual assault case, which was dropped last month.

After Quito gave him up in April, Assange was arrested and is currently serving 50 weeks in a London jail for breaching his bail conditions when he entered the embassy.

He is also fighting a request to extradite him to the United States where he faces 18 charges, mostly relating the obtention and dissemination of classified information over WikiLeaks' publication of military documents and diplomatic cables.

Assange is “very tired” as his “health is very fragile,” Martinez, his lawyer in Spain said.

He recalled that the United Nations special rapporteur on torture warned last month that Assange's health was so bad that his life was “now in danger”.

Friday's hearing came at the request of the National Court, which is investigating both Undercover Global and its owner David Morales, who was arrested in September but is out on conditional release.

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OPINION AND ANALYSIS

OPINION: Sweden must demand that Julian Assange go free

Given Sweden’s involvement in the Assange case, the government’s continued silence over his impending extradition to the US is indefensible, says David Crouch

OPINION: Sweden must demand that Julian Assange go free

I have no personal fondness for Julian Assange. I cannot forgive him for not condemning the torrent of abuse and slander suffered by the two Swedish women who, in 2010, accused him of sexual assault. His treatment of them has been shameful. Assange has continued to protest his innocence and has not expressed any regret for what happened

But that was then and this is now. At stake is something much bigger than the fate of one man and two women. And the Swedish government bears a clear share of responsibility for the outcome. 

Sweden’s prosecutors dropped the sexual assault investigation against Assange in 2017. For more than three years, he has been held in a maximum security prison in London while he has fought extradition to the United States on espionage charges. In April, a British court finally approved the extradition and referred the matter to the Home Secretary, Priti Patel. 

Today (June 17), Patel gave the green light for extradition; Assange has 14 days to appeal. 

Extradition would be a colossal blow against media freedom. Journalists would fear to investigate US military and surveillance operations around the world. Assange himself faces a lifetime in jail for publishing classified documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including evidence of war crimes

Many Swedish free speech organisations recognise this. “The information obtained thanks to Julian Assange and Wikileaks is of great public interest. In a democracy, whistleblowers must be protected, not taken to court to become pawns in a political game,” says the Swedish Journalists’ Association. A large number of press freedom and human right organisations have echoed these words, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Index on Censorship, to name but a few.

“Should Assange be extradited to the US, it could have serious consequences for investigative journalism,” says the Swedish branch of Reporters without Borders. “Through the indictment of Assange, the US is also sending a signal to all journalists who want to examine the actions of the US military and security services abroad, or US arms deals for that matter. This also applies to Swedish journalists.”

Last month, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, called on Patel not to extradite Assange, saying it would have “a chilling effect on media freedom”.  Anna Ardin, one of the women who brought the original accusations of sexual assault, describes the accusations against Assange for espionage as “helt galet” (completely crazy). 

Given Sweden’s involvement in the Assange case, the continued silence from Rosenbad, the seat of government offices in Stockholm, is indefensible. 

For the seven years in which Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, he said consistently and repeatedly that he was prepared to face justice in Sweden, but feared extradition to the United States and therefore required a guarantee that this would not happen. His treatment in the UK is proof that his fears were justified. 

As early as September 2012, The Local quoted Amnesty International on this matter: “If the Swedish authorities are able to confirm publicly that Assange will not eventually find himself on a plane to the USA if he submits himself to the authority of the Swedish courts then this will … it will break the current impasse and second it will mean the women who have levelled accusations of sexual assault are not denied justice.”

And yet, throughout, Sweden’s Ministry of Justice kept quiet. Instead, the Swedish Prosecution Authority stated repeatedly: “Every extradition case is to be judged on its own individual merits. For that reason the Swedish government cannot provide a guarantee in advance that Julian Assange would not be subject to further extradition to the USA.”

In 2016, a United Nations panel decided that Sweden had violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It called on the Swedish authorities to end Assange’s “deprivation of liberty”, respect his freedom of movement and offer him compensation. Again, the government itself remained silent, although Sweden’s director-general for legal affairs said that it disagreed with the panel.

Freedom of speech is one of the four “fundamental laws” that make up the Swedish constitution. There can be no excuse now for Morgan Johansson, Justice Minister, not to speak out in defence of Assange’s role as a whistleblower and journalist. 

Imagine if Assange had revealed Russian war crimes in Ukraine and was being held in Moscow’s high security prison? Every Western leader would be up in arms. 

Assange’s wife Stella Moris has Swedish citizenship. Her life, and that of their two children, will be destroyed if her husband, their father, is sent to rot in a US jail.

At this point in time, when Sweden’s independence in global affairs is in doubt owing to pressure from Turkey over its application to join Nato, it is even more vital for the government to break its silence and help bring the persecution of Julian Assange to an end. 

David Crouch covered Julian Assange’s campaign in the Swedish courts for The Guardian newspaper and is among 1900 journalists to have signed a statement in his defence. He is a freelance journalist and a lecturer in journalism at Gothenburg University.

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