They sue the CIA and its former director for alleged espionage against journalists and lawyers who contacted Julian Assange

Published:

16 Aug 2022 01:42 GMT

According to the complaint, the agency – which is not authorized to collect intelligence information on US citizens – violated the plaintiffs’ right to privacy.

A group of lawyers and journalists sued the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and its former director Mike Pompeo, for spying on them while they visited cyber-activist Julian Assange during his stay at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. , United Kingdom.

According to the complaint filed this Monday in a court in the Southern District of New York, the CIA – which is not authorized to collect intelligence information on the citizens of the North American country – violated the right to privacy of the plaintiffs, among whom are Assange’s legal representatives, Margaret Kunstler and Deborah Hrbek.

“The United States Constitution protects American citizens from overreach by the United States government, even when it takes place at a foreign embassy in a foreign country,” said Richard Roth, the lead prosecuting attorney, aforementioned by Reuters.

According to the lawsuit, during their visits to Assange, the journalists and lawyers had to hand over their electronic devices to Undercover Global SL, a private security company that allegedly copied all the data and provided it to the CIA, which was then directed by Pompeo. The company has not yet commented on any of the allegations against it.

Fidel Narváez, former Ecuadorian consul in London, stated in an interview with RT that US intelligence applies its conventional methods everywhere and that, in fact, all the harassment against the WikiLeaks founder poses a threat to the activity of the press in general.

“It’s not just about his personal privacy. It’s about the persecution against a journalist, against Julian Assange, who is being object of political persecution and […] illegal“, affirmed the diplomat. “The dangerous thing about the case is that they want to frame these accusations in what is the United States Espionage Law. We would be facing the criminalization of journalism,” he concluded.

Last month, Assange appealed to the UK Supreme Court against the measure ruling his extradition to the US, where he is accused of espionage and hacking for the publication since 2010 of hundreds of thousands of pages of secret military documents and diplomatic cables on Washington’s activities in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were released by its WikiLeaks leak portal.