Robert WENZEL
At Julian Assange’s extradition hearing, bombshell allegations involving US private citizen Sheldon Adelson are being made in conjunction with activities of US intelligence agencies.
Plans to poison or kidnap Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy were discussed between sources in US intelligence and a private security firm that spied extensively on the WikiLeaks co-founder, a court has been told, reports the Guardian. The plan to poison Assange was to sicken him so bad that he would have to leave the embassy and seek hospital treatment.
Details of the alleged spying operation against Assange and anyone who visited him at the embassy were laid out on Wednesday at his extradition case, in evidence by a former employee of a Spanish security company, UC Global.
Microphones were concealed to monitor Assange’s meetings with lawyers, his fingerprint was obtained from a glass and there was even a plot to obtain a nappy from a baby who had been brought on regular visits to the embassy, according to the witness, whose evidence took the form of a written statement.
One of the witnesses said that UC Global started off with small contracts that had been signed in October 2015 with the government of Ecuador in order to provide security for the daughters of the country’s president and its embassy in London.
However, they said this changed when the founder and director of UC Global, David Morales attended a security sector trade fair in Las Vegas, where he obtained a contract with Las Vegas Sands, a company owned by the US billionaire Adelson.
Morales was said to have returned to the company’s offices in Jerez in the south of Spain and announced: “We will be playing in the big league.” The witness added that Morales said the company had switched over to what the latter described as “the dark side”. This allegedly involved cooperating with the US authorities, who Morales said would ensure that they obtained contracts all over the world.
An increasingly sophisticated operation to monitor Assange was launched and would accelerate after Trump assumed office in 2017, the witness said, adding that Morales would make frequent trips to the US with recorded data.
“He [Morales] showed at times a real obsession in relation to monitoring the lawyers because our American friends were requesting it,” added the witness, who held a stake in UC Global for a period of time.
The role played by, Trump supporter, Adelson suggests an attempt by US authorities to use him to circumvent US law.
So much for any chance Trump is going to pardon Assange.
The focus by US intelligence agencies to get Assange, who for all practical purposes was a new media journalist, is stunning.
