Photo: Luke MacGregor/Bloomberg via Getty
Assange, 50, wed attorney Stella Moris at the Belmarsh prison where he has been detained in front of “only a handful of friends and family,” according to WikiLeaks.
“Their engagement was announced in November 2021 and over months of back and forth with the governor and prison authorities, the couple have been granted permission to marry inside the prison,” theWikileaks statement said, according to CNN. “Only four guests and two witnesses will be allowed to attend the ceremony, as well as two security guards. The guests will have to leave immediately after the event, even though it is being held during normal visiting hours.”
“I am very happy and very sad. I love Julian with all my heart, and I wish he were here,” Moris, an attorney who was part of Assange’s international legal team starting in 2011, said as she cut wedding cake outside the prison gates after their ceremony.
The couple began a romantic relationship in 2015,Reuters reports.
Sarah Saunders, a longtime friend and advocate of Assange’s, tells PEOPLE that while the wedding brought a certain kind of joy the context of the nuptials were their own kind of burden.
“It was pretty much a case of [Moris] walking in, getting married, and then walking out again. It was a fairly sanitary kind of process. Obviously, everybody had to have numerous security checks,” Saunders says. “Stella herself had to undergo many, many checks. Anyone going into the prison has numerous physical checks. So it’s not your normal bride getting ready for her wedding. She was intimately searched.”
“And this is all for the wedding of a man who is being held, without charge, in a prison with convicted felons, convicted murders, convicted terrorists,” Saunders continues.
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His team has said he is being politically persecuted.
“On a personal note, I feel so sad and disheartened,” Saunders tells PEOPLE. “The years roll on, and the kind of support Julian needs has changed over the years. It’s sometimes hard to know where you can make a difference.”
“You know what we are going through is cruel and inhuman,” Moris told supporters gathered outside the prison, according to Reuters. “The love that we have for each other carries us through this situation and any other that will come. He is the most amazing person in the world. He is wonderful and he should be free.”
Ben Cawthra/Sipa USA
On March 15, a U.K. high court refused Assange’s latest appeal in his extradition case, deciding that his application did not raise “an arguable point of law,“according to CNN.
Assange and Moris have two children, sons Max and Gabriel, who were born while he spent seven years underasylum inside the Ecuadorian Embassyin London while hoping to avoid extradition to Sweden in connection with separate allegations of sexual assault which have since been dropped.
DYLAN MARTINEZ/AFP/Getty
“Today is my wedding day. I will marry the love of my life,” Moriswrote inThe GuardianWednesday. “At lunchtime today, I will go through the gates at the most oppressive high security prison in the country and be married to a political prisoner, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.”
“The prison states that our wedding picture is a security risk because it could end up in social media or the press,” she wrote. “How absurd. What kind of security threat could a wedding picture pose?”
In May 2019, the U.S. charged Assange with 17 counts under the Espionage Act. If convicted, the combined maximum sentencing would be 175 years in jail.
Assange has said WikiLeaks publishes information in the name of total transparency.
Assangehas disputedRussia was his source.
source: people.com
