Spotlight is back on Assange as Pompeo probes his Russia links

WASHINGTON: While the charges filed by the US against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange remain a mystery, news reports indicate he had become a subject of renewed interest and investigation by the CIA about his alleged links to Russia under Mike Pompeo, former head of the US intelligence agency and now secretary of state.

Shortly after taking office as President Donald Trump’s CIA director, he had denounced Wikileaks as an organisation that “walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service”.

These remarks, in his first speech as director, came a month after Wikileaks released secret US tools for hacking computers and mobile devices, called the Vault 7 Disclosures.

After the address, he went to congress and privately briefed lawmakers of committees with oversight over intelligence agencies about counter-intelligence operations launched against Wikileaks and his intention to try to disrupt the organisation, according to The New York Times.

The CIA director and then attorney general Jeff Sessions then launched a campaign focused on investigating Assange’s ties to Russia and those efforts led to the filing of charges, the NYT report added.

That the US had secretly filed charges against Assange was revealed accidentally in a court filing in an unrelated case.

But the nature of the charges remain publicly unknown, setting off speculation if they were in connection to the Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

Assange has been living in the Ecuadorean embassy in London since 2012 to evade arrest against a warrant from Sweden in connection with an alleged sexual assault.

According to news reports, Assange’s lawyers have said their client is aware of the charges and he is ready to fight the charges, but he isn’t willing to travel to the US.

Carlos Poveda, Assange’s lawyer, suspects Ecuador has been trying “to kick Assange out” of the embassy in London.