Assange to marry inside high-security prison

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will marry his longtime partner in a high-security London prison on Wednesday.

Assange, 50, will marry Stella Moris in a small ceremony at Belmarsh Prison, his fiancee wrote in an op-ed in The Guardian on Wednesday.

“This is not a prison wedding, it is a declaration of love and resilience in spite of the prison walls, in spite of the political persecution, in spite of the arbitrary detention, in spite of the harm and harassment inflicted on Julian and our family,” she wrote in the article.

The Wikileaks founder is fighting extradition to the U.S., where he faces a potential trial for publishing a trove of classified documents more than a decade ago.

He has remained in the London prison for three years after he was arrested for skipping bail in a separate legal battle.

The U.K.’s highest court this month denied a request from Assange’s legal team to appeal the U.S. extradition.

But Assange, who claims publishing the documents was within his First Amendment rights, says he will take the decision to the European Court of Human Rights or challenge the judge’s decision.

Before his arrest in 2019, Assange took refuge inside the Ecuadoran Embassy in London for seven years. He met Moris, an attorney, in 2011, when she joined his legal team. The couple have two children together.

Moris said the wedding is being “intensely policed,” and authorities denied the couple’s request for certain witnesses and a press photographer, which she alleges flouts the prison’s rules for other inmates.

Assange’s bride-to-be accused authorities of treating her fiancee as a political prisoner and said they feared “that people will see Julian as a human being.”

“The urge of the authorities to silence and disappear Julian is born out of fear,” she wrote in the op-ed. “We have the strength of our love and righteous conviction. Julian’s family will fight for his freedom and for his life, until he is free.”