MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th June, 2020) Julian Assange never had ties to US whistleblower Edward Snowden or helped him escape from the United States to reassure other hackers, the WikiLeaks founder's lawyer has told Sputnik.
The US Department of Justice announced a superseding indictment last Wednesday. In a copy uploaded online, it claimed that Assange used Snowden's example to encourage leakers to "join the CIA in order to steal and provide information to WikiLeaks" and later helped him flee to Russia.
"Mr. Assange is not a recruiter of hackers because he is a journalist... He never had ties to Snowden," Aitor Martinez said to Sputnik on Monday.
On Snowden's escape from the United States to Russia in 2013, the lawyer explained that this was unintentional. The US had revoked the whistleblower's passport while he was in a Moscow airport's transit zone on his way to Cuba, stranding the former National Security Agency contractor in Russia.
