Stella Morris, a former member of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's legal team, revealed Sunday that while Assange was living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, he fathered two children with her.
Assange was arrested in 2019, and is now in a London prison as he fights extradition to the United States, where he was indicted on more than a dozen charges under the Espionage Act. In an interview with WikiLeaks, Morris said she is worried about Assange being in prison during the coronavirus pandemic, and his life "might be coming to an end" if he isn't released.
Morris said she met Assange in 2011 and they became a couple in 2015. The pair decided to have children to "break down the walls around him" and "imagine a life beyond prison." Assange was denied bail in March, and his attorney Jennifer Robinson told NBC News that Morris chose to share her story publicly because she hopes this will help secure his release.
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In a statement, Morris said she can sense "an increasing fear and panic" during her phone conversations with Assange. Morris also declared that she "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. I now fear I may lose him for different reasons and sooner to the virus." His extradition hearing is set to resume in May.
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