American lawyers for the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, announced Monday to file a complaint against the CIA and its former director Mike Pompeo, whom they accuse of having recorded their conversations and copied the content of their phones and computers.
The lawyers and two journalists who joined the complaint are all Americans and claim the intelligence service violated their constitutional right to privacy, in this case with Julian Assange, who is Australian.
They claim that the CIA worked with a security company hired by the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where Julian Assange had then taken refuge, to spy on the founder of WikiLeaks, his lawyers, journalists and other people who he met.
Julian Assange faces extradition from Britain to the United States, where he is accused of publishing diplomatic cables in 2010 relating to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
According to lawyer Robert Boyle, who represents the plaintiffs, these alleged acts of espionage mean that Mr. Assange’s right to a fair trial has “been tainted, if not nullified”, because “the government now knows the contents of these exchanges,” he told reporters.
“There should be sanctions, up to and including the dismissal of these charges or the withdrawal of the extradition request, in response to such manifestly unconstitutional activities,” he said. The complaint was filed by lawyers Margaret Ratner Kunstler and Deborah Hrbek, as well as journalists Charles Glass and John Goetz.
It targets the CIA, its former director and ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the security company Undercover Global and its president David Morales Guillen.
The complaint alleges that Undercover Global, a company based in Spain which was under contract with the Ecuadorian embassy, collected, on behalf of the CIA, information on the electronic devices of the complainants, in particular exchanges with Mr. Assange, and placed microphones in the building, the recordings of which as well as the remote surveillance images were also sent to the American agency.
Mr. Pompeo “was aware of and approved” of this collection of information, according to this court document, which specifies that Undercover Global was recruited by the CIA in 2017.
Julian Assange has appealed the British decision to grant the extradition request to the United States. The charges against him could lead to a prison sentence of up to 175 years.