the times | Saturday September 5 2020 1GM 21
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the baby’s DNA from his nappy or dum-
my to prove that Assange was the
father.
Furthermore, former Undercover
Global staff have claimed that there
was discussion about “extreme meas-
ures”, including kidnapping or poison-
ing Assange, according to evidence pre-
sented to the Spanish court.
It is claimed that the information ob-
tained by the surveillance was intially
passed to Zohar Lahav, a security offi-
cer at Las Vegas Sands. Brian Nagel, the
company’s chief security officer and a
former deputy director of the US Secret
Service, could have been the link to the
CIA, Assange’s lawyers claim. A Span-
ish judge investigating Mr Morales has
refused applications by Assange’s law-
yers for Mr Adelson and Mr Nagel to be
asked to provide statements.
Mr Morales initially insisted he had
not spied on Assange but later said that
he had been following orders from
Senain, the Ecuadorean intelligence
service.
Fidel Narváez, the first secretary at
the embassy at the time, has dismissed
the suggestion that the Ecuadorean
authorities ordered the surveillance.
Baltasar Garzón, Assange’s Spanish
lawyer, claimed that Undercover Glob-
al reported “regularly, thoroughly andFor an artist who relished depicting
humanity in all its guises — not to
mention one with a complicated
approach to parenting — it was a gilded
opportunity. Unfortunately Lucian
Freud’s last chance to paint his father
was blown by undertakers in a rush.
A biography has revealed that when
Ernst Freud, an architect, died aged 78
in 1970, his son had thought it the one
opportunity to bring his talents to bear
on what would have been one of his
Undertakers buried Freud’s only chance of painting his father
most psychologically complex paint-
ings. His father, who is described in the
biography as a “natural obstacle” to his
artistic career, had always refused to be
painted by him.
The opportunity in death, however,
was denied by Freud’s mother, Lucie,
according to the second instalment of
William Feaver’s biography of the
artist, The Lives of Lucian Freud.
She is said to have told him: “Oh, I did
think you’d want to draw him but for
the sake of an extra £33 they [the
undertakers] said they’d take the bodyright away.” The new book, which is
compiled largely from interviews
Freud gave to Feaver on the under-
standing that they would be used for a
posthumous biography, explores the
artist’s relationship with his father, who
was the fourth son of Sigmund Freud.
Freud told Feaver in one of their
many interviews that his father, who
had “amazing faces”, “wouldn’t sort of
let me” paint him.
“I would have done, oh yes, but my
mother said he’d be upset,” Freud is
quoted as saying. The day after hismother died, in 1989, he sketched her
features for a work titled The Painter’s
Mother, Dead.
The artist, who was one of the 20th
century’s most influential portraitists
and whose masterpieces can fetch tens
of millions of pounds, had a complicat-
ed approach to parenting himself.
He is rumoured to have fathered up
to 40 children, although not all have
been identified. His lovers hailed from
every section of society and included
the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire.
Her husband fell out with Freud afterthe artist ended the affair. Freud died in
London in 2011, aged 88.
Throughout his career he showed a
fascination with the human body,
painting people from the supermodel
Kate Moss to Sue Tilley, a Job Centre
employee known as Big Sue.
He immortalised Ms Tilley in
Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995),
which became the most expensive
painting sold by a living artist in
2008 when Roman Abramovich, the
owner of Chelsea FC, bought it for
£17.2 million.David Sanderson Arts Correspondent
quarters in Virginia, according to
Assange’s lawyers.
Staff were ordered to pay “spe-
cial attention to Stella Moris” and
to tail her mother, it is alleged. In an
email to staff Mr Morales wrote: “All
this has to be considered top secret so
the dissemination will be limited.”
A judge at the Spanish National
Court who is investigating Mr Morales
over the alleged London surveillance
has been told that recording devices
were hidden in a fire extinguisher
and the women’s lavatory, where
Assange held meetings to try to
avoid eavesdropping.
Mr Morales is also claimed to
have ordered his staff to obtain
Assange’s fingerprints and
records of his visitors, who in-
cluded celebrities, politicians
and lawyers.
Assange and Ms Moris
tried to hide their son’s
identity by having him
brought to the em-
bassy by their
friend Stephen
Hoo, an actor.
Mr Morales
allegedly or-
dered staff to
try to retrievein 2015 to protect him at the embas-
sy in Knightsbridge. In the summer of
2016 David Morales, a former Spanish
marine who ran the security company,
was allegedly recruited at a security
trade fair in Las Vegas to spy on
Assange.
Former staff at the security com-
pany claim that Mr Morales had
returned from the fair with a
contract purportedly with Shel-
don Adelson, a casino owner, to
guard Queen Miri, his $70 mil-
lion superyacht. Mr Adelson,
87, the chief executive of
Las Vegas Sands, a US
casino and resort
company, has do-
nated more than
$200 million to Mr
Trump’s presiden-
tial campaign and
Republican elect-
ion races.
Mr Morales
allegedly told staff
they were working
“for the dark side” and
“for the Americans”, with
material sent to CIA head-Julian Assange’s extradition case will
hear claims that the Wikileaks founder
was placed under covert surveillance by
a company linked to Donald Trump’s
biggest financial backer.
Bugging devices and cameras were
hidden around the Ecuadorean embas-
sy in central London, where Assange
was living as a fugitive, with a direct
feed to the US intelligence service, it is
claimed.
Stella Moris, 37, a lawyer with whom
Assange fathered two children while
living in the embassy, was also allegedly
placed under surveillance
along with his legal team and
prominent visitors.
The alleged spying and pol-
itical interference in the case
will be at the heart of As-
sange’s effort to avoid extradi-
tion to the US on 18 charges,
including conspiring to hack
government computers and
violating espionage law.
A four-week hearing start-
ing at the Old Bailey on
Monday will also focus on
claims that Assange will not
receive a fair trial if he is ex-
tradited to Virginia and will
be held in inhumane condi-
tions at ADX Florence, a
maximum-security prison
in the Colorado desert.
To his supporters As-
sange is a brave, campaigning
journalist who exposes the dark secrets
of nations and corporations. His law-
yers claim that if he loses the case it will
set a precedent for the US government
to prosecute foreign journalists and will
be seized upon by repressive regimes
around the world who want to curb the
media.
For the American authorities he is
simply a criminal who cultivated an
international web of hackers, aided
terrorists and endangered lives.
The US indictment claims that when
Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011, a
letter was found from the al-Qaeda
leader telling a member to gather the
US defence department material about
the Afghan war, which had been pub-
lished by Wikileaks after a leak by an
army intelligence analyst.
Assange, 49, will argue that the
alleged systematic surveillance he was
under at the Ecuadorean embassy was
evidence of the political motivation be-
hind the attempt by the US to prosecute
him for legitimate journalism.
He was allegedly placed under sur-
veillance by Undercover Global SL, a
company based in Spain that had been
hired by the Ecuadorean government
Trump spied on me, Assange claims
The fugitive is fighting
extradition on the basis
that the US monitored
his embassy bolt hole,
writes David Brown
q
A015 t tecthimattheembas- c
g
Julian Assange and Stella Moris at the embassy. David Morales, below, is
alleged to have been paid to monitor him there by Sheldon Adelson, leftin detail” what Assange’s legal team was
saying. “It is a scandalous thing that we
can say that it only happens in spy films,
but this is not a film because [it is] the
life of a person, who is a journalist,” he
told a Spanish court.
The alleged surveillance included
Assange’s meetings with his British
legal team, including the barrister Jen-
nifer Robinson. Ms Robinson says that
she was present when Dana Rohrab-
acher, then a Republican congressman,
visited Assange at the embassy in
August 2017. She says that Mr Rohrab-
acher offered a presidential pardon if
Assange would publicly say that Russia
was not the source of the damaging
emails published by Wikileaks from
Hillary Clinton and the Democratic
National Committee, as had been
claimed by investigators.
Mr Rohrabacher has insisted that he
was visiting in his own capacity without
the knowledge of Mr Trump and would
call for the president to pardon Assange
if he revealed who had provided the
emails.
Ms Robinson believes information
obtained from the surveillance includ-
ed plans to take Assange out of Britain
on an Ecuadorean diplomatic passport
in December 2017. This prompted the
announcement by the US two days
later that it had issued an arrest war-
rant, she said.
Assange is accused of encouraging
Chelsea Manning, a US army intelli-
gence analyst, to steal classified docu-
ments, which allegedly included assist-
ance to crack a password on computers
run by the US defence department.
The documents related to detainees
held at Guantanamo Bay, US State De-
partment cables and rules of engage-
ment files relating to the war in Iraq.
US prosecutors claim that Assange
knowingly put hundreds of sources
around the world at risk of torture and
death by publishing unredacted docu-
ments that contained names or other
identifying details, and claim some
agents in Iraq and Afghanistan “dis-
appeared”. They have said that journal-
ism does not excuse criminal activities.
The US issued a new indictment in
June alleging that Assange tried to
recruit cybercriminals at conferences
and also of conspiring with the leader of
LulzSec, a hacking group, and other
hackers.
Assange sought sanctuary in the Ec-
uadorean embassy in 2012 fearing he
was about to be extradited to Sweden
on sex assault charges, which were later
withdrawn. He was forcibly removed
from the embassy by police in April last
year after President Moreno of Ecua-
dor withdrew diplomatic protection.
Assange was jailed for 50 weeks in
May last year for breaching bail and is at
HMP Belmarsh, southeast London,
awaiting the extradition hearing.
Ms Moris has had one, 20-minute
visit with her fiancé in prison since the
lockdown began. “He looked a lot
thinner than the last time I had seen
him,” she said.