As part of a new effort to get Julian Assange released from prison over concerns he’ll catch the coronavirus behind bars, his partner Stella Morris has revealed that the WikiLeaks founder fathered two children with her while he was living in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy.
Morris was originally a member of Assange’s legal team. She says the pair met in 2011, but didn’t start a romantic relationship until four years later, when he was already living in the embassy. In a video interview released to WikiLeaks’ social media channels, Morris says the couple chose to have children in order to ”break down the walls around him” and “imagine a life beyond prison.”
Assange’s attorney Jennifer Robinson says Morris decided to break her silence about their children because she is concerned about his well-being during the COVID-19 outbreak in prison. “She wanted to speak in support of Julian’s bail application given the grave risk to his health in prison during the COVID pandemic and the judge refused her anonymity,” Robinson told NBC News.
In a statement signed March 24, Morris wrote that Assange is in isolation 23 hours a day and that she fears he may self-harm. “I have feared with strong reason for a long time that I will lose Julian to suicide if there is no way in which he can stop his extradition to the U.S.,” she wrote. “I now fear I may lose him for different reasons and sooner to the virus.”
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