The judge asks the US to allow him to question Pompeo as a witness about alleged plans to kill Assange

The founder of Wikileaks requested his appearance after the revelations of the former head of US counterintelligence

MADRID, 3 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The judge of the National High Court Santiago Pedraz has sent a rogatory commission to the United States requesting that it allow him to question former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former head of counter-surveillance William Evanina as witnesses about the alleged existence of a plan to kidnap and kill the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

This is stated in a ruling last Wednesday, to which Europa Press has had access, where the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 5 agreed to extend a previous rogatory commission to interest the testimony of Evanina and Pompeo, the latter as former director of the CIA, a position he held between January 2017 and April 2018, at which time he became the head of US diplomacy, all under the government of Donald Trump.

Pedraz thus accedes to the request made by Assange's lawyers in Spain in two separate documents where they proposed taking their statement after Evanina confessed that "United States Intelligence had access to the cameras of the Embassy of Ecuador in London, to recordings of conversations within the mission, to the devices of the visits and to the travel documents of all of them, having even planned the murder or kidnapping of the asylee".

It should be remembered that Assange was held for almost seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the United Kingdom. The Government of Rafael Correa gave him political asylum in 2012 out of fear that he would be extradited to the United States, although in 2019 the Executive of Lenín Moreno withdrew international protection and he was arrested by the British authorities for skipping the conditions of his conditional freedom.

Assange argued that he needed political asylum in the expectation that he would suffer some kind of retaliation in the United States for the revelations made in 2010 by Wikileaks about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which brought to light thousands of classified documents.

In their last letter, dated May 17, and to which this news agency has also had access, Assange's lawyers explained that the statements made by Evanina pointed to UC Global, "a company with headquarters in Spain, and above all which our country has jurisdiction", "as part of the plot" described by the former head of US counterintelligence.

For this reason, they understood that Evanina and Pompeo should be interrogated by Pedraz as witnesses because, "although due to their alleged participation in the events, the quality of being investigated could be considered, this is not possible as it is a possible crime committed by a foreigner in a country foreigner and lack jurisdiction" Spain.

In any case, they claimed, "their testimony is necessary for the investigation of this case, and all this because it has been proven that they are directly aware, and have publicly confessed it, of the facts surrounding the object of investigation" of the case. which is followed in the National High Court.

The Spanish court is investigating the alleged espionage that UC Global, directed by the Spaniard David Morales, would have facilitated against Assange by being in charge of the security of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London when the events would have taken place.

Both Morales --who is on provisional release with precautionary measures-- and UC Global are being investigated for crimes against privacy and the secrecy of attorney-client communications, bribery and money laundering.