[News:] Spanish police omitted folder called ‘CIA’ from judge investigating Assange spying case

(London, U.K.) Spanish police omitted “a very relevant volume of material” from the judge investigating spying allegations against UC Global owner David Morales — the former Spanish marine accused of breaching Julian Assange’s privacy while the WikiLeaks founder sought political asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy — according to a new report in El País.

An investigation into Morales was opened by Spain’s Audencia Nacional — a Madrid court with national jurisdiction to investigate major crimes — in July 2019. It came after two witnesses from UC Global, the firm contracted to provide security for the Ecuadorean embassy, approached Assange’s lawyers alleging that Morales used this access to surreptitiously eavesdrop on Assange, his visitors, as well as meetings held with lawyers and medical professionals, handing over the acquired materials to America’s Central Intelligence Agency.

Once a criminal case was opened, the premises of Morales’ home and business were raided by Spanish police on 17 September of that year. In the process, police confiscated over €20,000 in cash, two guns with serial numbers scratched off — one of which was loaded — as well as physical files, laptops, mobile phones and external storage devices in the form of pen drives and hard drives. Copies of the digital files were subsequently sent to the presiding judge as well as Assange’s Spanish lawyers who trawled through the evidence to compile a criminal case.

However, in going through the files — exceeding a terabyte and a half of data — Assange’s lawyers noticed that a number of the files were corrupted in the copying process, making them inaccessible. They successfully petitioned the judge to have their own IT experts make new digital mirrors of the devices in January of this year.

Now, according to their recent interview with El País, the lawyers made a shocking discovery once the new data had been accessed: 213.1 gigabytes of material originally on the devices was never included in what the judge or the lawyers received. It includes a staggering total of 551,616 files and 973 e-mails previously unseen.

Among them is a folder titled “Operations&Projets” in which further directories are broken down by region. Going to “North America” and then “USA”, a folder is found with the title “CIA”. In it, there are images and video footage from the secret surveillance undertaken in the Ecuadorean embassy. There are also files labelled “Ladies toilet” — where UC Global placed hidden microphones after learning that’s where Assange took his lawyers in an attempt to evade other forms of surveillance. Others were labelled “Fidel” — in reference to Fidel Narváez, the former Ecuadorean consul who attempted to help Assange escape the embassy by means of a diplomatic passport.

The finding is hugely significant as although previously received files showed Morales texting his colleagues with multiple references to working with “the American client”, “American intelligence”, and “the agency of stars and stripes” — in addition to bank, phone and flight records placing him in various American cities when key decisions were made — there never appeared to be an explicit reference to the CIA. That is now not the case and it should be instrumental in proving the criminal case against Morales, as well as to the civil suit in the Southern District of New York, filed against the CIA and its former director Mike Pompeo on behalf of Margaret Ratner Kunstler, Deborah Hrbek, John Goetz and Charles Glass as the plaintiffs.

Further still, this now becomes the second instance of Spanish police appearing to obstruct the Assange investigation. In a January meeting with Assange’s lawyers in Spain, Aitor Martinez told the author of this piece that following a December 2017 break in at his firm’s offices in Madrid — the ILOCAD practice set up by former judge Baltasar Garzón — the matter was investigated, but when Martinez followed up, police said there was no file in existence in relation to the break in. Further follow ups about this fact did not yield any additional information.

The break in — believed to be carried out by professionals who used gloves and other means to avoid detection — is suspected of being linked to Morales and UC Global due to testimony provided by one of the two witnesses.

In his statement to the Spanish court, Witness 2 — anonymised to protect him from potential reprisals from his former boss — said: “I recall that at the end of November 2017, David Morales told the company workers that the Americans were very happy with the information that we had supplied, but that they would need more.

“To this end, Morales spoke about the possibility of entering the legal offices of ILOCAD, the law firm which is headed by Baltasar Garzón in Madrid, given that Mr. Garzón coordinated the legal defence of Julian Assange. This would allow us to obtain information concerning Mr. Assange for the Americans.

“Two weeks after this conversation, the national media reported that men in balaclavas had entered Garzón’s law offices. I recall that the news was shared amongst the employees in the Jerez office, and we speculated whether this could have to do with what our boss, David Morales had suggested.”

Morales is currently under house arrest while being investigated for breach of privacy, violation of the confidentiality of attorney-client privilege, bribery and money laundering. The Spanish case against him is continuing and lawyers recently filed a request to extend the investigating period by an additional six months.

Assange, meanwhile, has now spent over four years imprisoned in Britain’s H.M.P. Belmarsh while U.S. attempts to extradite him to the country continue. He is wanted in connection with obtaining and publishing the infamous Collateral Murder video, as well as US military logs from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Defenders argue that the publication of these files is no different from what journalists do every day and that the prosecution is an assault on press freedoms. The U.S. says it’s a violation of the Espionage Act and that Assange should spend decades, if not the rest of his life, in incarceration.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article reported 254.5 gigabytes of material was not included, but was amended to 213.1 gigabytes following a change in El País.