The girlfriend of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has announced that the couple is close to getting married. Stella Moris, 38, who has been linked to Assange since 2016, revealed in an interview that preparations are underway for the wedding that will take place in the Belmarsh maximum security prison.
“That in prison will not be our only celebration – explained Moris – we will probably organize another one with friends and family when Julian is free”. Assange’s partner also explained that a date has not yet been set and that a difficult bureaucratic process has been started that should allow them to get married soon. “It’s pretty complicated, we talked about it with the Belmarsh chaplain’s assistants and they told us they haven’t seen a wedding in that prison since I’ve been there, which is 12 years. So it won’t be easy ».
Julian Assange’s girlfriend, Stella Moris
The Australian activist, who turns 50 in July, has been detained in the UK since 2019 and is now in some sort of legal limbo after an extradition attempt to the US was turned down by a British judge. Before his arrest he had spent 7 years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and it was around that time that he met Moris, with whom he had two children, now aged 4 and 2. Assange recently received a visit from his children and was able to hug them for the first time in more than a year.
“Being able to see the children again was a moment of relief for Julian, but the detention is making him suffer,” said Moris, who has indicated his intention to celebrate the wedding as soon as possible. “We prefer to get married as soon as the bureaucracy will allow us, rather than wait for her fate to be fulfilled,” he said. With the arrival of Biden, in fact, the situation for Assange could be resolved positively and Moris has launched an appeal to the new president: “Joe Biden must let Julian Assange free if he wants the United States to become a reference point for freedom of the press and leave Donald Trump’s legacy behind ”.
When Biden was Obama’s vice-president, the United States decided not to ask for Assange’s extradition on the grounds that WikiLeaks’ business fell within the journalistic freedoms protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. On the contrary, the Trump administration shortly after his inauguration filed a series of criminal charges against Assange accusing him of participating in a conspiracy with hacker.
Assange’s epic began in 2010 when a US military video was posted on the platform he managed, showing an air strike in which a dozen defenseless people are killed in Baghdad, Iraq. WikiLeaks has since published a number of state secret documents provided by anonymous spies and whistleblower.