Author: John Hudson / Source: Washington Post
U.S. authorities have made the first arrest related to the mysterious raid of North Korea’s Embassy in Spain in which masked assailants tied up staff, stole computers and fled to the United States, according to two people familiar with the matter.
On Thursday, federal authorities arrested Christopher Ahn, a former U.S. Marine and a member of Free Joseon, a group dedicated to the overthrow of North Korea’s Kim Dynasty. He appeared in a federal-district court in Los Angeles on Friday where his attorney requested that the case be sealed. The court ruled in the attorney’s favor over the government’s objections, a Justice Department spokesman said.
Separately, federal agents raided the apartment of Adrian Hong, the leader of Free Joseon, said people familiar with the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive law enforcement issue.
A spokesman with the FBI deferred questions on the case to the Justice Department.
“We will not comment on this particular matter at this time,” said Nicole Navas Oxman, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department.
The developments mark a dramatic turn of fate for the revolutionary group, which sought to assist U.S. authorities by handing over computers and other items stolen from the North Korean embassy that it characterized as potentially having “enormous” intelligence value.
In a statement to The Washington Post, Hong’s lawyer, Lee Wolosky, said he was “dismayed that the U.S. Department of Justice has decided to execute warrants against U.S. persons that derive from criminal complaints filed by the North Korean regime.”
“The last US citizen who fell into the custody of the Kim regime returned home maimed from torture and did not survive,” he said, referring to Otto Warmbier, a U.S. college student who was imprisoned in North Korea in 2016 and died shortly after being flown back to the United States in a coma in 2017.
“We have received no assurances from the US government…
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