Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is planning to get married to the mother of his children at the maximum security prison where he is being held.
The activist, who turns 50 this week, has spent more than two years at HMP Belmarsh following the end of his stay at the Ecuadorian embassy in central London.
He started a secret relationship with Stella Moris while confined to the embassy, fathering two sons while claiming political asylum and avoiding extradition.
The couple got engaged in 2016, and Ms Moris has now revealed that they are planning to get married at the prison rather than waiting until the end of legal proceedings involving Assange.
"The most likely thing is that we’ll get married in the prison and then we’ll have another kind of wedding celebration with friends and family once once he’s free”, she told news agency dpa.
"We have spoken to the Belmarsh chaplain services about it and they said they haven’t seen a wedding in Belmarsh for as long as they’ve been there, which is 12 years. So it’s not a straightforward thing to do."
In January, a judge ruled that Assange should not be extradited to face charges in the United States over the mass release of classified and confidential military cables.
While finding that US prosecutors had met the test for extradition, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser said she was not satisfied that Assange would be sufficiently protected from taking his own life in an American prison.
“Faced with the conditions of near total isolation without the protective factors which limited his risk at HMP Belmarsh, I am satisfied the procedures described by the US will not prevent Mr Assange from finding a way to commit suicide and for this reason I have decided extradition would be oppressive by reason of mental harm and I order his discharge”, she ruled.
Assange has continued to be held in prison while the US pursues an appeal against the decision to block extradition.
Read More
Events have been planned by his supporters to mark Assange’s 50th birthday this week, including a picnic in Parliament Square and a protest led by MPs outside HMP Belmarsh.
