(New York, U.S.) Members of Julian Assange’s legal team, in addition to journalists that worked with the imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher, on Monday filed a civil suit suing the Central Intelligence Agency and its former head, Mike Pompeo.
The suit, filed in the Southern District Court of New York, also lists the Spanish security firm UC Global and its boss David Morales as co-defendants. The two are currently the focus of a Spanish criminal investigation at Madrid’s Audiencia Nacional, accused of breaching Assange’s privacy by spying on him on behalf of the CIA while a political asylee in Ecuador’s embassy in Britain.
The US lawsuit – which lists Margaret Ratner Kunstler, Deborah Hrbek, John Goetz and Charles Glass as the plaintiffs – draws on evidence in the Spanish investigation to state that the four, all of whom are American citizens, were subject to the spying regime conducted by Morales and UC Global which required each visitor of Assange to surrender their passports, mobile phones and laptops. Each of these would then be scanned and have their contents copied, before allegedly being sent to the CIA, hence breaching the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights under the Fourt Amendment against illegal search and seizure, according to the complaint.
Filed by attorney Richard Roth on behalf of the complainants, the motion alleges “well over” 100 American citizens had their rights violated by the illegal search and seizure in this way. It called for monetary damages, for the courts to bar the defendants from further sharing the information, as well as for the CIA to purge all of the files from this surveillance in its possession.
Roth said that while Assange himself could not be a plaintiff in the case, given he was not a US citizen, it was hoped the suit would help generate evidence which would eventually help end Assange’s prosecution by the United States government and the associated U.K. Extradition request.
Assange has been imprisoned at the maximum-security H.M.P. Belmarsh in southeast London since April 2019 when Ecuador revoked his asylum and allowed officers from London’s Metropolitan Police Service to enter the embassy to carry out his arrest. After serving a 50-week sentence for jumping bail, Assange has been held as an unconvicted remand prisoner while U.S. extradition proceedings continued.
He is wanted in the U.S. for 17 charges of violating the Espionage Act and one charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. His lawyers in London are currently preparing an appeal to challenge the extradition order signed by U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel earlier this year, with submissions due to the court on August 28.
The case continues.
Read the complaint in full below:
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated a deadline of August 24.