Valentina Shvartsman - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's lawyers have high hopes of winning the case against a Spanish firm after collecting "tons" of proof that it spied on him at the Ecuadorian embassy in London on US orders, Renata Avila, a member of the whistleblower's legal team has told Sputnik
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th January, 2020) Valentina Shvartsman - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's lawyers have high hopes of winning the case against a Spanish firm after collecting "tons" of proof that it spied on him at the Ecuadorian embassy in London on US orders, Renata Avila, a member of the whistleblower's legal team has told Sputnik.
The case is being heard by a court in Madrid separately from the extradition request by the United States, which wants Assange on 18 counts, including violating an espionage act. The whistleblower, who is being held at a London prison, argues that he is being punished for having his website publish hundreds of thousands of secret US documents on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"In Spain, I have high hopes. We have tons of documents evidencing this, and I hope that the Spanish system will ... be up to the task and independent on assessing this case," Avila said.
Assange fled to the Ecuadorean Embassy in 2012 after Sweden made moves to extradite him on sexual assault charges, which the 48-year-old believes were trumped up to deliver him to the United States. The Spanish private security firm, Undercover Global Ltd, is accused of using its access to the diplomatic mission to wiretap Assange's talks with his doctors and attorneys.
"The case in Spain is a very important case because it is the case where we saw the evidence of gross violations of human rights consented by the UK and also it proves a serial, even systematic surveillance of doctors and lawyers of Julian," Avila stressed.
The lawyer said Assange's legal team had evidence that the US had orchestrated the wiretapping by paying the Spanish company through a US intermediary.
"There was a monetary deal between the Spanish company and a US company, and then the US company was somehow connected to the US intelligence. So you will have involvement of the US government in the surveillance," she explained.
Assange gained global prominence after his whistleblower website published a video in 2010 of US military helicopters targeting civilians, including Reuters staffers, during the war in Iraq. It also made hundreds of thousands of secret US documents available to the public.
