(London, U.K.) The fate of Julian Assange hangs in the balance this week as the United States government challenges its defeat at the Central Criminal Court where District Judge Vanessa Baraitser made an order for his discharge on January 4.
In spite of the ruling, the WikiLeaks founder has remained imprisoned at H.M.P. Belmarsh—the notorious grade-A maximum-security prison—and his total incarceration, notwithstanding seven years confined in Ecuador’s London embassy, has exceeded a period of two-and-a-half years.
Last seen by video-link in a preliminary hearing on August 11 where the U.S. was granted leave to appeal Baraitser’s ruling on extended grounds, Assange’s physical health had deteriorated to the extent that a number of journalists and observers noted he was almost unrecognisable. His hair had grown unruly and his eyes swollen and tired.
Wednesday and Thursday’s appeal at the Royal Courts of Justice will determine whether Assange will finally be granted liberty and whether his ghoulish nightmare will be brought to an end, or whether his imprisonment will continue on indefinitely pending the outcome of further appeals.
The United States will argue that District Judge Baraitser erred in her finding that Assange’s extradition should be refused pursuant to Section 91 of the Extradition Act of 2003, barring it on the basis that given Assange’s propensity for suicide, it would be oppressive by way of his mental health to send him to an America prison.
It comes after Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde and Justice Dame Judith Farbey ruled that it was at least “arguable” for the prosecution on behalf of the U.S. to contend whether the expert medical evidence of professor Michael Koppelman should be ruled inadmissible or given far less weight.
It followed arguments from prosecutor Clair Dobbin QC, on behalf of the U.S., that professor Kopelman, in writing a report that obfuscated that Assange had two young children with his partner Stella Moris while in the Ecuadorean embassy, subjugated his duty to the court as an expert witness by seeking to protect Assange’s family and their privacy. The U.S. will also raise the issue of assurances delivered to the United Kingdom by way of diplomatic note—supposedly re-assuring British justices that Assange would not be held in the Bureau of Prison’s restrictive Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) that amount to solitary confinement by any reasonable definition.
As reported by Consortium News, Lord Justice Holroyde and Justice Farbey will be joined by Britain’s most senior judge—Ian Duncan Burnett, Baron Burnett of Maldon, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. Whether the court will be swayed by the United States’ arguments is yet to be determined.
But given the imperfect yet explosive new set of revelations from Yahoo! News that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, with Mike Pompeo then at the helm, put together sketches to assassinate or kidnap Assange as part of an extrajudicial rendition, the three justices ought to look at the weight of evidence in an entirely new light.
In the January ruling, District Judge Baraitser dismissed evidence of extensive CIA hostility against Assange—stating that: “The defence has not established that Mr. Assange has been the target of a politically motivated prosecution.
“I have no doubt that the intelligence community regard him as a threat to the national defence; they have openly stated this view. However, there is no indication that this has translated into hostility from the Trump administration or that officials from the administration put improper pressure on federal prosecutors to bring these charges.
“I have no reason to find that prosecutors did not make their decisions in good faith.”
The Yahoo! News investigation paints a very different story, however—one where senior government lawyers increasingly grew alarmed at CIA involvement and were troubled by the lawless nature of the measures they proposed.
The report sheds new light at the levels of rage and fury harboured by Pompeo and the CIA at WikiLeaks—particularly following WikiLeaks’ publication of Vault 7 on February 26, 2017, a trove of files regarding extraordinarily pervasive hacking tools that amounted to “the largest data loss in CIA history.” According to a former national security official, Pompeo and the CIA “were seeing blood.”
Two days later, David Morales Guillén, a former Spanish green beret, was summoned to Alexandria, Virginia for a fresh set of instructions. According to email receipts viewed by both The Grayzone and Público, he proceeded to stay at the Grand Hyatt Hotel—minutes from CIA headquarters at Langley.
Morales is the founder of Spanish private security firm UC Global, a company at the heart of the revelations that the CIA adopted extraordinary measures to snoop on and gather information regarding Julian Assange. Who is this Spanish mercenary and what role did his firm have in the plots against the WikiLeaks founder?
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David Morales Guillén
David Morales Guillén, formerly a Marine lance corporal, joined Spain’s army in 1991. According to a profile en El Mundo, after training in the Navy’s Tercio de la Armada, he joined the Special Operations Unit, now known as the Special Naval Warfare Force (FUGNE). He further distinguished himself by becoming a Navy diver and a green beret. The piece also states Morales was a rarity and an asset in that he was fluent in both English and French.
“It was during one of my military missions, specifically in Bosnia, where I started to meet private contractor companies and where they suggested the possibility of trying out in this sector,” Morales told the publication.
Then, when later stationed at the Nato headquarters in Brussels, he came into “greater contact with the world of private military security,” and came to the realisation that the market was underdeveloped in Spain. He was attracted by the money, adrenaline and professional development, according to El Mundo, and set up UC Global in 2008.
In 2012, after cultivating contacts among Ecuadorean security officials, UC Global was sub-contracted by the Ecuadorean security company Blue Cell to provide security for then-President Rafael Correa’s family—the very same year Assange lost his Supreme Court appeal in the Swedish extradition case and entered Ecuador’s embassy in Britain seeking political asylum. Morales secured the contract for the protection of the London outpost and its new high-profile guest the following year.
According to a 2019 report in El País, Assange was aware of the monitoring and surveillance UC Global was providing for the Ecuadorean government from the outset of his stay in the embassy, even actively using the equipment in the “Bat cave”—as informally referred to by UC Global security guards interviewed by the Madrid-based newspaper.
“Not long after he arrived at the embassy in 2012,” El País reports, “Assange began to become suspicious and asked the diplomatic staff for permission to work with the recording equipment.
“He wanted to work out who was the person on the street throwing objects at his window in the early hours of the morning. He was granted permission but days later, when he was using the equipment of the ‘Bat cave,’ the security guard on duty tried to stop him. They argued and struggled. It was one of the first disagreements.”
In spite of this longstanding agreement with the Ecuadorean government, the existence of UC Global was not publicly known until 2018—two months after Ecuador terminated its security contract for the protection of the London embassy as well as winding up other accounts.
According to Arturo Torres, an Ecuadorean investigative journalist who first broke the news of UC Global’s arrangements for Codigo Vidrio, Ecuador cut ties with the Spanish firm following reports from its intelligence service, SENAIN. Although this was reportedly on the basis of contract breaches, it is not clear whether there is any connection to Morales flipping “to the dark side” and becoming a double agent, as he himself described it when talking to colleagues.
Torres revealed that UC Global’s contract for the surveillance and protection for the Ecuadorean embassy amounted to $84,100 a month—netting Morales’s firm roughly $5.7 million over the length of his relationship with the Ecuadoreans from this contract alone.
UC Global earned a grand total of $11.2 million when also taking into consideration the protection detail it provided to the families of successive Ecuadorean presidents, according to government records seen by Torres.
Although Assange was aware of the 24-hour surveillance, he was perhaps unaware that UC Global turned in bi-monthly reports to two SENAIN agents in the embassy who would also settle the company’s invoices. These included photo and video files of Assange, in addition to reports on high-profile and frequent visitors.
By 2018, after UC Global’s contracts with Ecuador expired and PromSecurity, an Ecuadorean private security company, took over protection of the London embassy, British plain-clothed officers entered the Knightsbridge building famously around the corner from Harrods and forcibly removed Assange one year later. But weeks before Assange was grabbed, an PromSecurity’s head of security got greedy and did the unthinkable. It led to the unravelling of the whole affair.
A swindle in Knightsbridge
In the early parts of 2019, as Assange’s graces with the Ecuadoreans declined following a change of government, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson—less than six months into taking on the role from Assange in September the previous year—noticed an odd tweet in which a publication by the name of Noticias Today claimed to have large amounts of personal material on Assange from within the embassy doors in Knightsbridge.
On March 8, Hrafnsson, the wily Icelandic journalist who’s been with WikiLeaks since the days of Collateral Murder, emailed the stated address enquiring for more information. His email read as follows.
In a response on March 11, Santos replied with a “promotional” video as to the kind of material they have on Assange. He also wrote: “We know that you were with J.A. in the Ecuador’s Embassy (sic) in London many times. This material, as you know, has a price. We wait of you answer (sic) as soon you have one.”
The following day Hrafnsson responded.
One day later, Pepe Martín Santos wrote: “Hallo Kristinn! We have this and lot of more, apart of very important (comitted) audios. The price is from €3,000,000 or we’ll start to publish by our own way (media, press, etc…)
“Thank you so much!”
Between then and March 15, Hrafnsson and Santos wrangle over terms and begin to negotiate, until Santos suddenly gave a taste of the kind of material he and his outfit holds.
Hrafnsson is then insistent that a meeting take place in Spain, where the apparent journalists reside, and after much toing and froing, a meet was set up for April 1 and rearranged for the following day.
Scheduled for 10.30 am in a Madrid hotel, the meet went ahead as planned with Assange’s Spanish lawyer Aitor Martínez present in addition to the gentlemen from Agencia 6—the so-called journalists who could not keep their story straight, revealing their true affiliations after deviating from Noticias Today.
At the meeting, Hrafnsson and Martínez finally caught sight of what the full trove of documents that they had contained. HD video files, audios and pictures of Martínez’s legal notes from the Ecuadorean embassy with his own handwriting on them. Only one thing had gone wrong for the extortionists, however: Hrafnsson filmed the whole affair on a mobile phone perched in the picket of his shirt and Martínez was kitted out with a wire—Spanish police had everything they needed.
Seven men—Daniel Sanchez Mulero, Alejandro Molla Consuelo, Javier Eulogio Blanco Alvarez, Pepe Martín Santos, Jiorge Washington Delgado Ávila and his two nephews Johan Manuel Moreira Delgado and Joseph Paul Moreira Delgado; all from Alicante in southern Spain—were investigated by Spanish authorities. It is unclear whether any charges have been laid before them.
Files from the Spanish proceedings identify Jiorge Washington Delgado Ávila as PromSecurity’s head of security within the Ecuadorean embassy, using pictures from Ávila’s Facebook page to confirm his identity from photos he’d taken while he was on duty.
Last straw
On April 10, 2019, Hrafnsson held a press conference in London alongside WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson and Fidel Narvaez, formerly the Consul of Ecuador and a senior diplomat at its London embassy for eight years.
“It is a grave and serious concern when legal meetings are being spied upon and legal documents are stolen,” Hrafnsson said. “That is something that not even prisoners have to endure.”
Robinson said it was a clear breach of Assange’s fundamental human rights.
“The documents you have seen demonstrates just how much surveillance he has been under and it is a breach of confidence for us, his lawyers, and his doctors to provide medical care in the embassy,” she said. “This is a severe breach of attorney-client privilege and fundamentally undermines our ability to defend and provide defence to Julian Assange.”
One day later the Ecuadorean embassy was stormed by officers from London’s Metropolitan Police Service. The very same day, in spite of a Grand Jury that was empanelled since 2010, Assange’s first indictment would be unsealed by the Department of Justice—the first time a journalist had been charged with violating the archaic Espionage Act of 1917 in the history of the United States. He was soon taken to Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh, where he has remained to this day.
Everything needed for the story to go away was in place, particularly as it was PromSecurity officials who had been investigated for spying on Assange while in the embassy. But perhaps UC Global founder David Morales wanted to tie up any loose ends. He agreed to an interview with El Mundo and it was published three weeks later on May 4.
In the profile, picturing a blond, stocky Morales clutching a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, alongside a glowing run-down of his military career, the Spanish-born security contractor denies his firm had anything to do with the spying, saying that anyone “from diplomatic personnel, as well as from former workers of UC Global, from the subsequent company or from agents assigned by the Ecuadorian government,” could have been responsible.
“All the actions referred to,” Morales adds, “in relation to the blackmail attempt to which, it appears, Mr. Assange has been subjected, in which he was allegedly shown confidential material such as documents and video recordings, are established in a period where our activity had already been terminated, so we are not responsible.”
All of this was too much for a UC Global employee who knew too much about Morales’s true manoeuvrings. Upon reading the article, he approached Assange’s Spanish lawyer Aitor Martínez in Madrid.
Juan Passarelli, a Guatemalan documentary and filmmaker with close ties to WikiLeaks, told me: “The whistleblower approached Aitor after David Morales went to the media. It was kind of the final straw for the guy.”
Two further UC Global whistleblowers have since come forward and their evidence was since put forward at last year’s extradition hearing at the Old Bailey in September. Morales was also detained in September the year prior in 2019—UC Global offices in Cadiz, southern Spain, were raided and documents, computers and technical equipment were seized.
It was then that the Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement with Morales and UC Global had started to become clear.
“To the dark side”
Once witness testimony, Morales’s emails and UC Global’s servers were in the custody of Spanish police and onwards shared with Assange’s defence, a number of investigations have since been published on the contents of these files.
Court documents filed by Assange’s defence, and since viewed by both The Grayzone and Público, assert that Morales was first recruited by the CIA during a January 2016 arms fair at the Convention Center in Las Vegas—a building that was owned by the late ultra-Zionist tycoon and Trump financier Sheldon Adelson.
Morales was personally invited to the fare by the Zohar Lahav, Vice President for Executive Protection at Las Vegas Sands Corporation—a company that Adelson owned before his death in January of this year.
According to analysis of the documents by both The Grayzone and Público, Morales returned from that meeting with a contract to carry out the protection of The Queen Miri—Adelson’s $70 million yacht. That being in spite of the fact that it has been reported that the yacht already has its own security detail, some of which is supervised by the CIA according to several sources who spoke to Público.
Ex-UC Global employees also reported that when Morales came back from his trip, he was in a euphoric mood and said that that he had gone “to the dark side, to play in the first division.”
“The Americans will find us contracts around the world.”
References to the United States are then constant in Morales’s emails. “The American friends,” or “We are playing in the big leagues.” Or alternatively, “The agency of stars and stripes.”
IP addresses examined by the two publications also place Morales at Adelson-owned Venetian Casino Hotel in Las Vegas or at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington D.C. at times when key emails regarding Assange’s surveillance are sent.
Crucially, emails and IP addresses confirm Morales was in Alexandria, Virgina on February 28, 2017—two days after WikiLeaks began publishing Vault 7 documentation on sensitive snooping methods of the CIA.
As reported in the Yahoo! News investigation mentioned previously, WikiLeaks’ publishing of these documents sent Pompeo off into a rage. He then launched into a tirade about the organisation in his first public remarks as the newly appointed director of the CIA at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on April 13, famously referring to WikiLeaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”
But as reported in Yahoo! News, “More than just a provocative talking point, the designation opened the door for agency operatives to take far more aggressive actions, treating the organization as it does adversary spy services,” former intelligence officials said.
According to The New York Times, Pompeo made his way to Congress following the speech in order to privately brief members of intelligence oversight committees. Officials told the publication that the CIA was conducting counterintelligence collection, which can include developing informants and penetrating computers overseas.
Such collection no doubt included the surveillance carried out extrajudicially by UC Global of Spain.
On September 21, 2017, for example, Morales writes to his colleagues: “I alert you to be very careful with the information we transmit… I’m already on my way to everyone being careful with the information… SENAIN is investigating us.
“That is why I would like that in the first place my location whenever possible to be handled with reservation (especially my trips to USA).”
At the time, he was at the Venetian Casino Hotel.
Two months later on December 10, where IP analysis places him in the same location again, Morales instructs his employees: “I am told that for the access of the Ecuadorians to the remote system (streaming) we must take into account that we must program them to see only what we are interested in and we must not give them access to certain services of the program.
“In order that they cannot visualise who has more connections or who is connected to the system… everything should look like they have access to it.”
Furthermore, the Yahoo! News investigation confirms that U.S. intelligence had access to live video and audio feeds.
And further still, there is evidence that information acquired by the U.S. as a result of intelligence-gathering consequently turned into tangible action.
On December 21, 2017, as reported en El País, Assange had a meeting with the head of the Ecuadorean secret service, Rommy Vallejo, and discussed the prospect of taking him to another country with the aid of a diplomatic passport. As District Judge Baraitser’s January ruling later revealed, the United States issued its international arrest warrant on Assange the very next day. The U.S. ambassador also informed Ecuador of the plan hatched between Assange and Vallejo.
Finally, the witness testimony of the two protected whistleblowers verifies and authenticates the information. They detail at length how bugging equipment was installed and how gathering of intelligence expanded to carrying out extended surveillance of “priority targets” that included Assange’s lead lawyer, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón.
Coincidentally or not, three hooded men, dressed in black, attempted to burgle Garzón’s Madrid offices on December 18, 2017. According to El País, they “shuffled through documents,” but took nothing of value.
Whistleblowers also revealed the existence of plans to kidnap or poison Assange in the September 2020 evidentiary hearings at the Old Bailey. Protected Witness 2, by way of a witness statement, said: “I recall that on one occasion, in Jerez de la Frontera, at the UC Global headquarters, David said that the Americans were desperate and that they had even suggested that more extreme measures should be employed against the ‘guest’ to put an end to the situation of Assange’s permanence in the embassy.
“Specifically, the suggestion that the door of the embassy could be left open, which would allow the argument that this had been an accidental mistake, which would allow persons to enter from outside the embassy and kidnap the asylee; even the possibility of poisoning Mr. Assange was discussed, all of these suggestions Morales said were under consideration during his dealing with his contacts in the United States.
“Obviously, we as employees were shocked at these suggestions and commented amongst ourselves that the course that Morales had embarked on was beginning to become dangerous.”
As Assange’s fiancée Stella Moris commented before Wednesday and Thursday’s hearings, these revelations—further confirmed by Yahoo! News—are monumental in significance and will be instrumental in arguing that District Judge Baraitser was wrong to dismiss CIA machinations against Julian Assange.
“This is a game changer going into the appeal because it shows the true nature, the true origins, the true criminality of the U.S. actions against Julian,” she said.
And she is right. These are acts of revenge endemic of a political persecution—something developed democracies have banned for years. The laws cannot be ignored for the very person they were designed to protect. Let’s hope Britain’s most senior judge is able to see that, or else Assange’s detention is set to continue on for years.
The case continues.
Tareq Haddad is an independent investigative journalist who has followed the prosecution of Julian Assange since his resignation from Newsweek in December of 2019. If this report was beneficial to you, please consider becoming a regular supporter or making a one-off donation.