the Australian Julian Assange and his fiancee, South African lawyer Stella Moris, wed in a UK maximumsecurity prison on Wednesday the founder of WikiLeaks He has been held at the Ecuadorian embassy in London since his arrest in 2019.
Assange, 50, is doing everything he can to avoid extradition to the United States, which wants to bring him to justice for releasing hundreds of thousands of classified documents, many of which exposed US military abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The UK Supreme Court last week denied him the opportunity to appeal the delivery, on which UK Home Secretary Priti Patel now has the final say.
Assange and Moris secretly gave birth to two children during the nearly seven years the Australian lived as a fugitive at the Ecuadorian legation in London, where he was arrested in April 2019 when President Lenín Moreno withdrew the protections his predecessor Rafael gave him in 2012 would have. Belt.
In November, they announced their engagement and were granted permission to wed at Belmarsh Prison, south of the capital.
“This is not a prison wedding, this is a declaration of love and resistance despite prison walls, despite political persecution, despite arbitrary imprisonment, despite the harm and harassment inflicted on Julian and our family,” Moris wrote in an article published on April 20 It was published Wednesday by Britain’s leftwing daily The Guardian.
A civil registry officer will make the connection and only four guests and two witnesses will be allowed to attend.
Moris criticized that prison authorities turned down the proposed witnesses who are journalists and the photographer who also works for the press even though they were attending the ceremony “in a private capacity”.
“They want Julian to remain invisible to the public at all costs, even on his wedding day and especially on his wedding day,” he wrote, likening this “logic of making a person disappear in hopes they’ll be forgotten.” “what Soviet Russia did”.
The dress worn by the bride, a young lawyer who joined Assange’s defense team in 2011, was designed by legendary British designer Vivienne Westwood, 80, who has long supported Assange’s cause.
The Australian will wear a Scottish skirt in a nod to his ancestors.
Guests must leave immediately after the ceremony, but in their best clothes, dozens of supporters plan to gather outside the prison, where Moris who asked for donations for legal expenses in lieu of gifts will cut a cake and bake a speech.
Assange has become a thorn in the side of press freedom advocates who accuse Washington of attempting to suppress relevant security information. But US authorities say he is not a journalist but a hacker and has endangered the lives of many whistleblowers by releasing the full documents without first editing them.
Assange faces 175 years in prison if convicted of espionage in the US.
His defense, coordinated by former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, argued that he could commit suicide if exposed to the US prison system. And at first he managed to get the British judiciary to agree with him.
But the US executive appealed, convincing the judges he would be held in good conditions and with appropriate psychological treatment, and given the green light for his surrender.
“We will use all national and international resources to defend those who have committed no crime and have heroically and courageously resisted persecution for more than 11 years for defending freedom of expression and access to information,” Garzón said and suggested his fight against extradition must not end here.
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