- Stella Morris, a lawyer on
Julian Assange 's legal team, has revealed she and the WikiLeaks founder have two children together, who were born while he lived at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. - She came forward with the information in a bid to get Assange out of prison amid the novel coronavirus outbreak.
- Assange is being held at a London prison as he fights extradition orders to the US on espionage charges.
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Julian Assange fathered two children while he was living in London's Ecuadorian embassy, his lawyer, who says she's the children's mother, said in a bid to get the WikiLeaks founder released on bail.
Stella Morris, a lawyer on Assange's legal team, first revealed she and the Assange had children to The Mail on Sunday, then publicly revealed the information in a video shared on WikiLeaks' social media pages.
Assange, who also has an adult son, is currently being held at London's Belmarsh high-security prison and is fighting an extradition order to the United States.
The WikiLeaks founder sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where at the time he was facing charges in a sexual assault case that has since been dropped. He was arrested by British police in 2019 to face espionage charges in the US over the leaking of classified federal documents.
In the video shared on WikiLeak's social media pages, Morris said she met Assange in 2011, started a relationship with him in 2015, and got engaged two years later.
She said the two children, born in 2016 and 2019, were planned in an attempt to help Assange "imagine a life beyond prison."
—WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 11, 2020
Morris also issued a witness statement to the British government in March, in which she said she was concerned for Assange's health amid the novel coronavirus outbreak, and feared he could die in prison, according to NBC News.
"I have 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 US," Morris wrote in the document, seen by NBC
Assange's attorney Jennifer Robinson told NBC News that Morris has protected her family's privacy for years, but a judge refused her anonymity.
"She wanted to speak in support of Julian's bail application given the grave risk to his health in prison during the COVID pandemic," Robinson said.
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