Julian Assange given permission to marry partner Stella Moris in prison

Gulf Today Report

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, 50, will be able to marry in his maximum security prison near London, pending the outcome of a request to extradite him to Washington, which wants to prosecute him for leaking a huge number of secret documents, according to his lawyer partner, Stella Moris.

"Good news: the British government backed out 24 hours before the deadline," tweeted the South African lawyer, mother of two Assange children he had as a refugee at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Julian and I have been given permission to marry in HMP Belmarsh.”

"I am relieved, but I am still angry because we needed to take legal action to end illegal interference with our basic right to marry," she added, after she announced in the past few days the start of proceedings against the authorities' refusal to allow this marriage.

According to a prison administration spokesman, "Assange's request was received, examined and dealt with in the usual manner by the prison director, as is the case with any other prisoner.

The date of the marriage has not yet been set, noting that the British judiciary ruled in January in the case of Assange, refusing to extradite him to the United States because of the risk that he would end his life in the event of extradition.

Washington's appeal was heard during two days of hearings at the High Court in London in late October.

Assange is being pursued in the United States for publishing in 2010 on the WikiLeaks website more than 700,000 documents related to Washington's military and diplomatic activities, specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange was transferred to this heavily-guarded prison immediately after his release in April 2019 from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, to where he had taken refuge seven years earlier, disguised as a merchandise deliverer.