Illustrative Image
Written by Dr. Binoy Kampmark
However described, the shabby treatment of Julian Assange never ceases to startle. While he continues to suffer in Belmarsh prison awaiting the torments of an interminable legal process, more material is coming out showing the way he was spied upon while staying at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Of late, the Spanish daily El País has been keeping up its exemplary coverage on the subject, notably on the conduct of the Spanish-based security firm, UC Global SL.
There is a twist in the latest smidgens of information on the alleged bad conduct by that particular company. As luck would have it, UC Global was commissioned by Rommy Vallejo, the chief of Ecuador’s now defunct national intelligence secretariat, SENAIN, to give the London embassy premises a security and technological touch-up.
Vallejo may have sought their services, but seemed blissfully ignorant that he had granted the fox access to the chicken coop. This access involved the installation of hidden microphones throughout the embassy by UC Global at the direction of its owner, David Morales. Morales, it seems, was updating the US Central Intelligence Agency with information about Assange’s meetings with his legal team throughout.
Much of this was revealed in the trial against Assange conducted at the Central Criminal Court in 2020, though the presiding Judge Vanessa Baraitser seemed oddly unmoved by the revelations, as she was by chatter among US intelligence operatives to engineer an abduction or assassination of the WikiLeaks founder.
The link between UC Global and the CIA was the fruit of work between Morales and one of his most notable clients, the casino company, Las Vegas Sands. Morales was responsible for supplying the owner of the company, the late billionaire magnate and Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, with personal security. In the merry-go-round of this field, one of those on Adelson’s personal security detail was a former CIA officer.
On December 20, 2017, Michelle Wallemacq, the head of operations at UC Global, penned a note to two technicians responsible for monitoring security at the embassy. “Be on the lookout tomorrow to see what you can get… and make it work.” The request was related to a scheduled meeting between Assange and Vallejo. The theme of the discussion: to get the Australian publisher out of the embassy, grant him Ecuadorian citizenship and furnish him with a diplomatic passport. This had a heroic, even quixotic quality to it: the grant of a diplomatic passport would not have necessarily passed muster; and the chances of Assange being arrested could hardly be discounted.
Eleven months prior to Morales passing on the tip that scuttled Assange’s escape plans, Morales was already chasing up his staff from one of Adelson’s properties, The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas. One technician received the following: “Do you have status reports on the embassy’s computer systems, and networks? I need an inventory of systems and equipment, the guest’s [Assange] phones, and the number of networks.” He also warned his technicians to be wary “that we may be monitored, so everything confidential should be encrypted… Everything is related to the UK subject… The people in control are our friends in the USA.”
On June 12, 2017, Morales, enroute to Washington, DC, requested his contact to activate a File Transfer Protocol server and web portal from their Spanish headquarters. The portal in question: the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Material began being collected on Assange’s guests, eclectic and of all stripes: journalists, doctors, lawyers, diplomats. Mobile phone data was also hoovered up. After his Washington stop, Morales popped into Las Vegas Sands, where he met his eager “American friends” to reveal the information so far gathered about Assange.
Over this time, it becomes clear, in Morales’s own words, that “he had gone over to the dark side” and that “they were working in the Champions League”. Emails sent on September 8 speak of offering “our information collection and analysis capability to the American client”. Discussions with a UC Global technician focus on gathering information from the microphones in the embassy. “The guest [Assange] has three rooms and uses two quite frequently… We would have all the audio from there except in one room.”
On September 21, it was clear to Morales that they had gotten sufficiently mired in the business of spying on Assange to be wary of any potential surveillance from SENAIN. “I would like my whereabouts to be kept confidential, especially my trips to the USA.” Instructions are distributed to gather data on the embassy’s Wi-Fi network, photos of the interior and furnishings of the embassy, and any data on Assange’s primary visitors, notably any members of his legal team.
The recording of one meeting would prove critical to upending plans to get Assange out of the embassy. Present Assange, his lawyer, now wife Stella Morris, Ecuadorian consul Fidel Narváez and Vallejo. The date for the getaway was slated for December 25, with the plan that Assange leave via one of the ambassador’s cars which would make its way through the Eurotunnel to Switzerland or some designated destination on the continent. “It’s very late,” wrote one of the technicians a few hours after the meeting’s conclusion to Morales. “Because it’s so big, I put the file in a shared Dropbox folder. Someone with experience in audio can make it more intelligible.” While Vallejo could be heard fairly clearly, the voices of Assange and Morris were “very muffled”.
Within a matter of hours, Morales had relayed the material to those “American friends” of his, greasing the wheels for proceedings that would culminate in Assange’s expulsion in 2019 and the indictment listing 18 charges, 17 of which are drawn from the Espionage Act of 1917. The plan to leave the embassy was never executed.
There are two significant events that also transpired before Vallejo’s visit to Assange. The first involved an advisor to the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister who is said to have had information about the plan regarding Assange’s escape. He was assaulted by a number of hooded men at Quito Airport on his return from the United States.
On December 17, 2017 it was time for hooded assailants to turn their attention to the Madrid law offices of Baltasar Garzón and Aitor Martínez. Their target: a computer server. The timing was ominous; both lawyers had just returned from meeting Assange in the London embassy. The intruders proved untraceable by the Spanish police, despite leaving prints.
In hindsight, it does seem remarkable that Vallejo and SENAIN remained ignorant of the rotten apples in UC Global. As things stand, Morales is facing a formal complaint filed by Assange in the Spanish National Court. He is also facing an investigation for alleged breaches of privacy, the violation of attorney-client confidentiality, misappropriation, bribery and money laundering. The presiding magistrate on the case, Santiago Pedraz, has requested the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to press the CIA in supplying information about the embassy spying.
Even better will be the abandoning of the entire proceeding, the reversal of the extradition order made in June 2022 by then Home Secretary Priti Patel, and a finding by the UK authorities that the case against Assange is monstrously political, compromised from the start and emptied of legal principle.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Assange will soon be a free man and all thanks to Putin’s special military operation.
I wouldn’t bank on it, my Country where Assange is locked up is a prostitute for its American Pimp.
Brits should do prison break and free Julian Assange.
Assange’s arrest means we all live in police states.
Entire EU is a fascist prison controlled through mind fucking, blackmail and sheere lying to the people of so called EUSSR. American strength against globalist puritan and jewish talmudic cabal is in their Constitution, advantage of nations in EU is exactly that – that they are true nations with their own history and culture which they do not renounce for the sake of Brussels masonic-sotonic cretin ideas and visions created by very sick minds. Thanks God, with the fall of Pentagon/NATO, EU will cease to exist and immediatelly all over Europe, public hanging of European corporate, bankster and aristocratic elites should start. Right after the prelude of hanging of trecherous politicians and members of their families.
Public hangings only if people civilians demand it. Nuremberg trials is evidence that many nazis escaped with help of America.
Pozzz
If your country is UK, you should be aware that so called Land of the brave is controlled by lizzard queen privy council and their jewish bankers like Rotschilds. Washington is just their tool, not overlord.
The CITY in London and their Rotshchild overlords are parasites on humanity.
Russia has to free each country, whole world to be able to free Julian Assange, or prisoners exchange, but american and british terrorists would not exchange Assange, only in a case for their lives if they feel threaten. Julian Assange is their’s Black Jack card against Russia, China and few other countries.
Only prison break in meantime could save Assange’s life or change of regime in UK and USA.
Consider Ukraine just as an brief introduction of whats coming. Just an opening move in a game of global chess. Patience. Globalist sotonists haven’t created their system in a 7 years but in a couple of hundreds of years. All takes time but do not worry – destruction of these turds will not take hundreds of years. Imagine that, scumbag families did a lot of hard work since so called French revolution, investing a lot during some 250 years and all of that in smoke in just a couple of years.
Assange case is an another example how puritan protestant scumbags of lizzard queen geneaology hire jewish gangsters to do the dirty deeds. They did it throughout history, always using a jew to plunder, threaten or kill your countrymen or other nations. Usury, slavery, excessive taxation, human trafficking, human organs trafficking . you can always smell talmudic jew’s presence, bidding for their protestant overlords in exchange for a fee, of course, or power, or technology or favor. Why not, goyims are just a cattle, despised by their “god” who arrived from who knows what planet, galaxy or whatever. Stupid protestants are just a jews in disguise, both being cliptips.
Recommend everybody who supports Assange to read this article… it has good points to ponder…. https://www.veteranstoday.com/2019/02/15/the-strange-case-of-julian-assange/
What is your opinion on the article you recommended ? Nowdays Saudi Arabia does not fit in the scenario from the article.
You got my attention. Thanks for the hint.
What surprises me is that Russia’s government and China’s government are not showing any interest in Julian Assange’s case. This is why you got my attention.
1/3 Why has Saudi Arabia come to an agreement with Iran? Have the problems been solved? You may have heard about the CIA-led riots in Iran in the last 6 or 7 months. One of the main internet networks that has been fueling the situation with its lies and propaganda was a Saudi-funded network (which has a website, TV channel, and even a radio channel).
Just 6 months ago, Saudi Arabia was trying like hell to change the regime in Iran, and they suddenly came to their senses? The reason for the current Iran-Saudi deal is that the Saudis have realized that if they get involved in any kind of war with Iran, it would be just like Ukraine. The US and the West would do nothing for them other than just talk the talk, on the other hand Saudi needed to end its war in Yemen, but didn’t want to surrender… Iran had its own interests too, they wanted to export even more.
So Saudi Arabia came to logical senses, which is good. I was following up from very start that story about protest in Iran. I don’t know much about politics in middle east, what upsets me is that USA is destroying it.
Thank you for insights.
2/3 I’m sure Iran hasn’t forgotten the lies that these Saudi funded channels said about it and many terrorist groups that are funded by Saudi government to harm Iran… this is just politics, cause no party’s “ideology” has changed… So, it really doesn’t mean that the “Trump” supporter Saudi has suddenly become the good guy.
I understand your point, but when it comes to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, I think we have to consider the then-situation, nobody could predict today…
Why saudis want to harm iranians ?
3/3 I agree with most points in the article, not 100%, but most of it really makes sense, especially when you see a person like Alex Jones comes up with the idea of “911 truth,” but is actually hiding the truth and implementing CIA’s plans. He was successful at misleading the real truth seekers of 911. He raised the question of whether Bush knew about it and hid the fact they “plannned” it really, he hid the fact that no real plane can fly in such a speed in that height…. There are many crisis actors who, in the name of truth-seeking, are still spreading CIA propaganda. I’m just saying we shouldn’t believe Wikileaks or Assange are trustable only because the MSM and/or western governments pretends to be their enemies…
Thanks for the time you took
I have issue to reply to your last comment, probably censored terms I am using.
I thought Israel was responsible for 9/11. I know it’s an inside job, because inside jobs always involve the CIA and/or the FBI.
I’m not sure Julian Assange is truly involved, as indicated in the article linked to by you. Why ? Because they may have taken advantage of Assange. Why would he be imprisoned? It makes no sense to keep him in prison. People to whom he caused harm by publishing documents imprisoned him so that Assange does not cause further harm to them in public. Perhaps he was threatened by Israel not to publish the cables, and they struck a deal if any documents could cause harm to Israelis. According to Assange’s wife, he is in very severe mental health.
I’m attempting to apply logical reasoning thinking rather than stating whether or not the information from the link is right or incorrect.
Gordana, I understand your point and it’s a credible concern… However, I have doubts about whether he’s really in prison or not. There’s no way to confirm this besides what the mainstream media has told us. The article also raises some valid points that cannot be ignored.
Julian Massonge has praised Netanyahu in the past, which is worth considering. As for 9/11, it wasn’t “only” an “inside” job, sorry if i wasn’t clear enough in my previous comment, It’s no secret that Israel and Zionists hold control the US behind the scenes… and yes, 911 benefited Israel the most…
Yes no credible evidence is Assange or not in prison. But there were family photos, wedding photos … I know does not prove he is kept in prison. We can question everything. At some point truth would come out.
There are many reasons, the first reason is that the Saudis, the majority and government, are Wahhabi, and Wahhabism is a cult, created by the UK (historical evidence proves it…), it really has nothing to do with real Islam and is built based on blind support for some ordinaty people… the Wahhabis believe Iranians are infidels… so they do hate iranians because of that… ISIS is also Wahhabi and said anyone a who kills three to seven Shia Iranians would go to heaven… (lol) guess who would love such an ideology other than the Zionists?
There are many other reasons too, but I can’t post the comment when I say Saudi is not independent…
But to be honest, the main reason is that the Saudi is just another Zio puppet… their war in Yemen perfectly proves that…
So how does fits in Saudia Arabia to make compromise with Iran if saudis are backed up by brits and jews ? What is in the stake that brits and jews agree to this ? I understand lately Israel fears Iran because of iranian massive military tech and nuklear upgrades.
I know about Wahhabism it was brought in the Balkans. I am from Serbia.
I see, but even Europe is trying to distance itself from America. I mean, yes, they are puppets, but anyway, they care about their own benefits too, don’t they? Saudi Arabia is a puppet, mostly because its Wahhabism cult was created by them. I mean, they are not just dependent on their missiles and investments, but anything they do or think is also affected by them.
The last two kings of Iran (both Pahlavis) were puppets too, installed by the UK and US. But when the US used the jet fighters that Pahlavi had bought from them in Vietnam, it made him angry too.
Thank you Gordana for the time you took… few people think for themselves these days…
You are welcome. Thank you too for insights.