A Spanish security firm, which is alleged to have been spying on Julian Assange at the US’ behest during his time at the Ecuadorian Embassy, tailed the mother of Julian Assange's fiancee, Stella Morris, and illegally recorded hours of footage of their baby son, court files suggest, as reported by the Australian Associated Press.
A criminal complaint against David Morales , the owner of the firm called UC Global, is currently being looked into by Spain's National Court, with court documents detailing the extent of the alleged illegal spying, which is understood to have targeted Morris, her mother, and Assange's baby boy Gabriel.
According to an email that the court was handed, Morales called on his staff on 21 September 2017 to pay "special attention” to Stella Morris, while also ordering to keep tabs on Morris' mother, who, the company had found, was living in the Spanish province of Catalonia.
"If necessary, I want a person fully dedicated to this activity, so if you have to hire someone to do it, let me know", Morales reportedly wrote, stressing that “all this has to be considered top secret so the dissemination will be limited”.
Hours of footage of the infant stored on the company's corporate computers were handed to the Spanish court by former employees, while the parents of the child had been trying to hide the boy's true identity by having their friend Stephen Hoo bring him for visits, pretending to be the baby’s father.
However, UC Global is said to have conducted sweeping background checks on Hoo, eventually coming to believe that Hoo’s fatherhood was an intentional deception.
A former staff member, currently a protected witness, has reportedly given a sworn statement to the Madrid court, saying that Morales was allegedly determined to prove that Assange was Gabriel's father. After someone from the security company stole the baby’s nappy to conduct a DNA test on his faeces, which proved insufficient, Morales is alleged to have devised a plan to lay hands on the boy’s pacifier. At that point, having legal and moral concerns about the work, the witness instead decided to warn Morris, urging her not to take the boy to the embassy again.
Separately, the court is looking into files alleging that when Morales became concerned that Ecuador wanted to end the security contract, he tried to use "intimate photos" of a diplomat stolen from Morris’ personal hard drive to blackmail Ecuador's foreign intelligence agency SENAIN not to withdraw.
"These extremely private photographs were allegedly in the possession of UC GLOBAL, were printed and were part of an extortion report that sought to prevent SENAIN from terminating the contract", Assange's criminal complaint reads, stressing that the evidence proves UC Global assisted the US in tapping Assange's intimate life on the embassy grounds.
Earlier this month, it was revealed through the now public court files about the US extradition case and Morris’ interview that the WikiLeaks founder had fathered two sons while under political asylum - and round-the-clock monitoring - in the Ecuadorian Embassy. Unless released, he is expected to tie the knot with the boys’ mother, lawyer Stella Morris, while still behind bars.
Assange, who has been seeking bail as COVID-19 sweeps through the population of the UK’s toughest Belmarsh Prison, is wanted in the US state of Maryland on espionage charges. If proved guilty on the indictment related to the handover of piles of secret cables on alleged US war crimes during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Australian will be given a prison term of up to 175 years.
The WikiLeaks founder faces overall 17 charges under the Espionage Act and one of conspiracy to commit computer interception. All of them have to do with the leak of 700,000 classified documents handed to WikiLeaks by former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning - Bradley Manning before he changed his gender - in 2010. Washington claims the leak risked the lives of American agents and their sources in the field.
